Between The Lines: Partners
by Anti-Kryptonite
Summary: There are only two things Nathan knows for certain, two constants around which his life revolve. The first is that Haven hides a multitude of secrets, and none of them are good news for him. The second absolute is newer but he is even more sure of it than he is of Haven's secrets. Because the second thing he relies on absolutely is Audrey Parker. Season 2
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So this is a direct sequel to 'Between The Lines: Friends,' and follows season 2 of the show. It's kind of hard trying to juggle everything and still remember what I've changed and what all that change effects, so I hope you can enjoy. If you spot something missing (like, did anyone else notice that I completely forgot about Julia Carr last season? because I didn't notice until I was posting it, and by then, oh well, guess she went back to Africa a little early!), you can let me know, though I may just shrug and move on.

I'm eager to hear what you guys think of this season - Nathan's point of view is HARD!

* * *

There are only two things Nathan knows for certain, two constants around which his life revolve. The first is that Haven (his hometown and his prison; his refuge and his penance) hides a multitude of secrets, and none of them are good news for him. Not the Troubles brewing beneath the Americana façade. Not the growing hints that Duke's even more of a pain than Nathan already knew he was. Not the reason behind the chief's stern silence and gruff words or the motivation behind the Teagues' job offer so long ago, just when Nathan had begun contemplating leaving Haven (pretending the whispers and the glares and the pointed avoidance would not follow him everywhere he went), leaving all of it behind for good (contemplated turning tail and running like a coward; just like Duke had).

The second absolute is newer but he is even more sure of it than he is of Haven's secrets—more sure of _her_. Because the second thing he relies on absolutely is Audrey Parker, and she is so much more real than all of Haven's impossibilities.

Nathan _knows_ Parker. He knows that she can only ever be good for this town (for him), that she is the best thing to ever happen to Haven (to him). He knows that she will throw herself headfirst into danger, and be happy about it so long as it's a _weird_ danger. He knows that the only thing stronger than her intuition is her compassion. He knows that her sense of humor is as quirky as the things that amuse her, that her laugh is the best sound his sensitive ears have ever heard, that she smells of lilacs and lilies (or at least, that's how he processes her unique scent), that she is the one silver lining to the Troubles (to _his_ Trouble). He knows _her._

And this stranger, this woman with dark hair and a badge, a gun, an attitude, and Audrey's words in her mouth is _not_ Audrey Parker.

Parker's thrown. He can tell by the way her gun wavers, by the glance she slants toward him before she catches herself. He senses her doubt and confusion. But Nathan is not confused, not even surprised (he's long since realized the futility of questioning any of the improbabilities Haven throws at him; better just to set his stance and endure than waste time and energy questioning why or how).

He wishes he had a gun so he could keep his own aim secure and let Audrey have her moment (after everything, it's past time for her to be allowed a little time to process). He wishes he had handcuffs so he could take this woman's wrists (he wouldn't feel them, he knows that without question) and cuff her, put her in the Bronco, drive her far outside Haven, somewhere so distant she'll never again be able to stir that doubt in Parker's eyes.

Nathan's seen a lot of things in Audrey since she came to town. Excitement, interest, curiosity. Worry, fear, fierce resolve. Compassion and friendship and trust.

But never doubt. Never this strange, unsettling hesitation.

He doesn't like it.

He wants her to smile again (at _him_ ). He wants her to tease him about pancakes and sip his coffee and bump her shoulder against his (to reach out to him even when he can't feel the touches through clothes, because it's nice knowing that someone _wants_ to reach out). He wants to rewind the last few moments and make sure she knows (knows with the same surety he knows her) that he doesn't regret her entrance into his life. That he doesn't even remember what his life was like before she came to town (except that it was dull and monochrome and lonely in a way he hadn't even allowed himself to recognize until she made it a thing of the past).

But even in Haven, that's impossible. And he has no gun. No cuffs. No badge. Only a camera, a notebook, and a pen.

It will have to do.

When the other woman finally puts her gun down and Audrey pulls out her cuffs, Nathan takes them from her. Usually, it's Parker moving forward, two steps ahead of him but always looking back at him over her shoulder with an expressive face and a quip or two. This time, he has to forge ahead in her place.

(He was right: he can't feel this strange woman at all. She is as unreal and abstract as everyone else in his world.)

Nathan does his best to take the whole thing in stride. He shrugs at Audrey when she blurts out questions one right after another. He ignores the other woman, pointedly and repeatedly (he of all people knows how much of a punishment being completely ignored truly is, and for all her seeming honesty, he cannot forgive her for the catch in Audrey's throat), and directs his gaze, his attention, his words, to Audrey alone.

But it's not enough. She's not looking at him. She's staring at the other woman, noting gestures and mannerisms and word choices. While Nathan uses the Herald's resources to look into this other 'Audrey Parker's' past and background, Audrey is examining emotions and motivations, backstories and private anecdotes. It's what she always does—looks at the person rather than the situation. Connects to the Troubled and understands them in a way he doesn't think she understands herself.

Ordinarily, Nathan would be fine with it. But not when it makes her look smaller and more fragile every time he sees her.

"What, you on the force now?" his dad demands after tripping over him in the station for the fourth time. "Didn't you get enough action around Hansen?"

It's cruel, but he lets it slide off him (just like he always does around the chief, because better to take a few grumpy words than the physical blows Max Hansen gifted him with; at least he knows the chief really does love him). Just shrugs and doesn't look away from the computer screen displaying three cases that 'Audrey Parker' has supposedly solved since Nathan pulled Parker out of that swaying car (one in Miami, another in DC, and a third in Houston).

(He chooses to focus on Audrey and this other woman rather than the fact that the chief knew Max Hansen was in town but didn't bother to tell him; or to wonder at the reason the chief hasn't said a single word to him about the bullet he put through Hansen's chest. At least Audrey is something he understands.)

" _You're_ Audrey Parker," he tells her when she wants to take the stranger with her on the case. "I know who you are, Parker, and that…" He nudges his chin toward the other woman without actually looking her way. "That is not you."

"No, but maybe I'm her," she says.

She's wrong. Nathan drives them both to the house of parents terrified for their son-in-law and the grandbaby he took from them. (The other woman doesn't smell of lilies and lilac, only a generic perfume and a hotel shampoo; Nathan rolls down the window to rid the Bronco of the unwelcome scent.) He tries to stay in the background when the Rev and Duke are both on either side of him (since he's relegated back to the role of chauffeur while this other woman takes his place at Parker's side). He feels darkness closing in on him, thinks he sees the Rev standing over him (or is it Duke? one triumphant, the other worried, both unwelcome), but he's not afraid.

Because he knows: Audrey Parker solves the Troubles.

When the darkness recedes and his limbs once more obey him by righting his view of the world (when he looks up to the second story window and sees Parker smiling down at him), Nathan feels only a vague sense of satisfaction (and possibly a quiet relief to have proof that there isn't another Max Hansen Jr. running around somewhere; one is more than enough) because it never occurred to him that Audrey would fail.

Through it all, he watches the other woman. It's what he does, after all. When people are busy ignoring him, they forget that _he_ isn't ignoring _them_ so they speak more freely in front of him, reveal things they don't realize he sees.

This other woman says some of the things Parker would, yes, he won't deny that. But her tone is off—more abrupt, less amused, clipped and just a bit rushed. She may draw her gun the same way Parker does, but she draws it quicker, holds it in a tighter grip, and doesn't holster it when she comes across the Troubled. She is drawn to the weird, but she is afraid of it, too, slightly, enough to prove that she is just a regular person, not at all like Parker, who is absolutely fearless when it comes to Haven's Troubles.

She's different, this other woman, and Nathan wishes he knew how to show that to Audrey, because all she sees are the similarities. But words, at least spoken words, don't come easily to him, and Audrey moves so much faster than he does. By the time he's marshalled his arguments, she's already accepted this other woman as the real Audrey Parker. Already installed her in a room next to hers at the hotel and switched her suspicion entirely to her own Agent Howard.

"If my memories are all hers, then who am I?" Parker asks when Nathan shows up the next morning to drive her to the station.

"You're Audrey Parker," he says stubbornly.

The shake of her head is impatient. "No, Nathan, I don't think I am. But am I really Lucy, or was that just another person whose memories I stole?"

She always has so many questions. Not that Nathan doesn't, but he doesn't have quite the same drive to see them answered. To Parker, a mystery is a challenge she _can't_ walk away from; to Nathan, it's a puzzle that probably holds a concealed weapon aimed straight at the heart.

"How long is this other woman going to stay?" he asks, because as much as he wishes otherwise, he has no answers to give her.

"Her name's Audrey Parker," she says, almost petulantly.

"Maybe," is all he says.

But even if it is, he realizes, he does not care. She is not _his_ Audrey Parker, so maybe she has the same name and maybe Parker wants to treat her like they're sisters, but to Nathan, she will never be anything but a stranger (an unwelcome one).

To Nathan (to Haven), there is only one Audrey Parker that matters.

* * *

"You had to shoot him," Duke says, out of nowhere. Nathan frowns over at him. He hopes Audrey will finish settling the other woman into her hotel soon; he doesn't want to have to stand here with Duke any longer than necessary.

"Hansen," Duke says, as if that explains everything. "Everyone knows you had to shoot him. I mean, the inquiry lasted all of…what? Twenty minutes? He was better off dead."

Nathan squints at the other man. Though he used to know Duke well, things have changed and there are a lot of things he doesn't understand about the smuggler (most especially why he keeps hanging around Parker when she hasn't, as far as Nathan knows, ever agreed to even a date with him). But Duke is, he thinks, trying to comfort him. In a very strange, disjointed way.

"I know," he finally says since Duke seems to be waiting for a reply. Nathan looks back toward the hotel on the vague chance that Audrey will appear.

Duke scoffs. "Oh. Just like that, huh? But then, I forgot, you're not really a… _real_ …boy, are you?"

In his peripheral vision, Nathan sees his own shoulders rise, and knows he must be tensing, huddling into himself. Because attempted comfort or not, this is always the way it goes between him and Duke. Duke approaches, Nathan rebuffs, Duke needles, Nathan snaps inside, Duke is left looking like the injured party. They've been playing this same old game since they were kids, and he wonders that Duke doesn't seem as tired of it as Nathan is.

"He's dead," Nathan says coldly. "And he wasn't my dad. Why should it bother me?"

Duke stares at him. "Why _shouldn't_ it?"

But Nathan refuses to look at him. He hasn't even told Audrey about the sleepless nights when every time he closes his eyes he sees Hansen shoving him toward Duke, or the surprise in Hansen's eyes when he saw the blood in his own chest, or the way the trigger was so easy to pull that Nathan hardly even realized he'd done it. So why would he tell Duke? Why would he confide in Duke, of all people, that he is afraid he will wake up one day and be as cold and curious and smiling as Max Hansen when people are hurt all around him? _Because_ of him.

"Huh." Duke nods, backing away. "Like father, like son, I guess." Nathan can tell by the none-too-casual glare Duke directs to his left arm that he means the tattoo (and that explains it all, doesn't it, not a sloppy attempt at comfort at all, just Duke wanting something from him, again, like always), but Nathan flinches anyway.

Then Audrey's there, striding up to meet them with some quip on her lips, and Duke's smiling and casual, the consummate chameleon. Nathan looks away and knows there will be bruises on his hands from the fists he is making within the shelter of his pockets.

"You okay, Nathan?" Audrey asks.

"Of course he is," Duke exclaims, fun and teasing (mocking). "Nathan's always all right. No matter what. Right, Nathan?"

Nathan tastes blood in his mouth. But he walks away.

(That's what he always does. It's all he knows how to do.)

* * *

He's coming out of the Herald with his keys in his hand when a man barrels into him. Nathan catches the scent of brine and dust and sweat, sees the street swing from before him to behind him, and instinctively clasps his hands over the man's shoulders.

"Sorry," the guy says. He moves—Nathan hears the clinking of the keys in his hand; he assumes the man tried to shake his hand—and then before Nathan can even get out a "No problem," he's hustling away, presumably late for something. Besides a look down to make sure he still has the keys in his hand, Nathan puts the event out of his mind (though he feels slightly pleased that the man bothered to apologize at all, even if just because he didn't realize who Nathan was).

Audrey is spending all her spare time with the other woman, and though he does his best not to feel like he's been replaced, it definitely leaves him with a lot more time on his hands. Stephanie at the coffee shop started making Audrey's drink before he could tell her that it was just him today. Strange, that, how much he's gotten used to _having_ someone else in his life when for so long it was just him.

"Nathan!"

He turns at the call and sees Audrey striding toward him. She's smiling. The sun is brilliant against her hair, warm enough to make Nathan wonder if he should have left off his jacket. Or maybe it's only the warmth of Audrey's smile and the relief he feels that she is alone (no other woman to throw her off balance; no Duke Crocker to annoy him).

"Parker," he says, to communicate both his surprise at seeing her and his pleasure that she is obviously looking for him.

(It's petty and small of him, but sometimes he wonders if she would want his company so often if he didn't drive her places or offer her his local and journalistic insider information. It is not that he doubts _her_ , but that he has no idea what else it is he has to offer her.)

"How about lunch?" she asks him brightly. "I haven't had pancakes in almost four days, and I'm pretty sure that's a record since I've met you."

Nathan hums noncommittally, then says, "Was actually planning on a cheeseburger today."

Her eyes widen for an instant (victory that quirks his lips upward) before she smirks at him. "Either you're putting me on or there's a _very_ strange Trouble at work here."

"We've had worse," he says as he falls into step with her (and he loves this, the way their strides are so different but they walk at the same pace anyway; the way he knows where she's going without asking and she knows when he'll slow to smile at a baby in a passing stroller).

"Worse than changing you into a strange echo of yourself? I don't think so."

She's laughing as she says it, but he thinks she _means_ it, and Nathan suddenly feels warm and wide and expansive. He feels as if he can sense everything—the sun on his face and the jacket hanging on his shoulders and the edge of his denim pockets biting against the backs of his hands.

The nip of a breeze and the nudge of Audrey's elbow against his arm through their jackets and the pebble he steps on with his left foot.

"How powerful would a Trouble have to be to affect the way a person _is_ , do you think?" Audrey's asking (teasingly, still, but he can sense the pensive undertone). She doesn't realize he's stopped in his tracks as abruptly as if he ran into a wall. Nathan wants to call out to her so they can realign their steps, but his voice has been snatched away, perhaps taken in payment for this miracle (and that's a trade he would make in a heartbeat, would never regret, something he could live with so easily, to speak through pen and paper rather than live in such unfeeling isolation from the world).

He runs one hand over another. _Feels_ it, the smoothness of the back and the calluses on the palm, the tendons moving and fingers sliding against each other. Unable to help himself, he reaches up to his face. Gasps at the sensation of stubble, the abrupt transition to weathered but softer cheeks, then nearly drops to the ground when his pinkie brushes against the nerves on his lips. Sensitive and responsive and flaring with sensation.

"How would we even grade them on a scale—" Audrey's voice cuts off as she realizes he's not beside her anymore. "Nathan?"

Wonderingly, afraid to take his hand from his face in case this all goes away, Nathan looks up to her. "Think I did change somehow, Parker."

Her eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"

"I can feel," he says simply. Just that.

Just _everything_.

* * *

It doesn't go away. They walk to Joe's Diner and order pancakes. Nathan touches everything he can—silverware has a strange fascination now, so sleek and shiny and ridged on every side so that there is always a delineation between the metal and his own skin. Even simple temperature is startling, the contrast between the rays of the sun and the intermittent sweeps of the wind. And his own skin…he knows it must look weird, even disturbing, but he cannot stop himself from touching his own flesh, his face and his hands, his wrists and his knees, his toes wriggling in his shoes. He has been a stranger to his own body for years now; it is mesmerizing to reacquaint himself with the boundaries of his skin.

Audrey watches him. She smiles when he does and laughs when he exclaims at the feel of his glass of ice-water against his fingertips, but there is a shadow of worry under her eyes, too. Nathan doesn't mind. When she questions herself, he is there for her. It feels good to know that in his euphoria, she is watching out for him in return. Besides, the only reason she is so worried is because she cares about him.

And for the first time, Nathan lets himself think on that.

She cares for him.

She likes him.

She seeks him out and chooses to spend hours of her day— _every day_ —with him.

And he likes her. He cares for her. He does not want to become a nuisance, but he would, he thinks (back to days when she slept in his bed and guarded his door and pulled him so effortlessly into her office), spend every hour—of every day—willingly beside her.

He can admit it now, can think on it and consider it, because now it is not about her being immune to his Trouble. Now it is about _who_ she is and how much he loves hearing her laugh and helping her figure out Troubles and watching as she reaches out to people who feel alone and scared and _helps_ them. Fixes them.

Well, now _he's_ fixed, so if she does still want to spend time with him, it's not about his Trouble either.

Suddenly, so suddenly that he is afraid, there is so much possibility open before them. So many options he didn't have before.

The pancakes are finished and Audrey's inviting him (or ordering him, really) to spend the day with her (just in case, though she doesn't say that), and Nathan sets aside these thoughts for later. For now, it's enough to have been granted one miracle.

* * *

"It's not a miracle," the chief tells him bluntly. Nathan had found him talking to a strange giant of a man with wild hair (for all his size the man slipped away without a sound), and Nathan had blurted out his exciting news. Garland isn't happy for him, though. Of course not. Nathan wonders now why he'd thought he would be.

"It's a Trouble, son. It has to be, and there's no way it can last. As soon as Audrey finds out who's causing it, you'll be right back to the way you were."

Nathan knows he's probably right. Nothing good ever comes for long, he knows that, and when it disappears, it usually leaves things worse off than before. But he wishes, just once, that his dad could be happy for him.

"I can feel," he says (one last bid for a moment of understanding).

But the chief just shakes his head and grinds the gum between his teeth. "Don't get attached, Nathan. It's not worth it."

Swallowing back his anger and his resentment (choking on his disappointment), Nathan clenches his fist (feels the strain), turns (notices a crack behind him, running up over the door of the chief's office), and stalks away. He's glad when Audrey chooses not to comment.

* * *

It's not that Nathan wishes ill on the other woman (mostly he just wishes her gone), but he is triumphant when he realizes she froze at this strange fear Trouble while Parker ran ahead. It is one more proof that she is different, is _less_ , and surely even Audrey must recognize this sign.

But she doesn't. Of course. To her, it is only further proof of her own immunity, the fact that she is set apart, an outsider; and she bonds with the other woman more to hear that she shares her terror of clowns. Nathan tries to joke about that particular phobia, but he cannot keep it up for long. Not when he is beginning to be afraid of his own reaction when he runs into this fear Trouble (it's inevitable, seeing as how he will not leave Parker and she won't stop until they find whoever's causing this). He is afraid that _he_ will break and run and abandon Audrey, too.

Still, he finds it odd, the method Audrey chooses to threaten him and his teasing smile.

"Remember you can feel pain now," she warns, as if the reminder is a bad thing. As if it does not make him smile, all over again, to remember that he is fixed. To remember that the slight awkwardness and the imbalance of power between them has been removed. To realize again that there can be _more_.

* * *

When he does see his fear (a girl, he tells himself, over and over again, a young girl who's scared and even more isolated than he was before this morning), he is instantly a young boy again. There's a shape over him, large and menacing and smiling, smiling, always smiling as the fists come down and his mom is crying in the background and Nathan doesn't feel the blood sliding down his skin but he still feels so very, very scared. All his accomplishments, the years he has spent coming to terms with these repressed memories, the bullet that ended this nightmare…none of it matters. All gone, and Nathan is helpless and useless, unable to save his mother—the only one who loves him—and all of his pain and horror is witnessed by that gaping, unchanging smile.

But Nathan has felt this before. Has faced it and dealt with it over and over again. Has watched it cost him the future he could have had and the job he wanted enough to pursue it even over the chief's objections. He's endured and knows he can emerge out the other side, so this is simply a temporary setback.

"Go!" he tells Audrey. "I'm fine, go after her!"

She asks him what he sees, but he waves her away because some demons you shouldn't ever put into words. Especially when his is dead and buried and unmourned.

* * *

Jackie is young. She is scared. She is isolated. Nathan has been all of those things, but he was still able to live and work and interact with people. He understands Jackie in a way he thinks Audrey and Duke don't. They stand at his shoulders like sentinels (even Duke, and for all that Nathan has always thought Duke doesn't care what he caused, maybe he does feel guilty after all) and caution him again and again ( _don't get too close, don't let his blood touch you, don't risk it, don't take a chance on going back to the useless version of you_ ), but they don't understand.

Before, his Trouble was an affliction. It was a curse put on him by who knows what and never guaranteed an expiration date. But now, here, today, with a bandage in his hand and blood smeared over skin he can feel for only a second more, it becomes a choice. A decision _he_ makes. A sacrifice he takes on himself.

It doesn't make it easier when the sun fades away and the wind vanishes and the feel of his own body's confines evaporate. It doesn't make it better when he wakes up each morning and wonders if he's died without realizing it, only drifting through the remains of his life. It doesn't make up for the feel of silverware and the nip of the wind and his dad's warmth an arm's length away. It doesn't give back all the possibilities he glimpsed so very briefly that are now closed and dark and impossible once more.

But it helps him sleep at night. Even if just for a while.

* * *

"Hey," Audrey says across from him at the Gull. "What you did, that was really amazing."

Nathan looks at the rose in his hand. He can't feel it. He might as well be holding nothing in hands he doesn't possess with arms that don't connect to him. It's colors and scent and even taste when he licks his lips over where he brushed the petals, but no weight. No texture. Nothing but a dream, like an imaginary phantom.

He told Audrey that sometimes he feels like a ghost in his life, but that isn't entirely true. If he knew how to put it into words, he'd try to explain that he doesn't feel closed in by his affliction. It doesn't confine him at all. Instead, it makes him feel limitless. Unbounded. He floats on an ocean with no landmarks, no islands, nothing but _nothing_. All around him the world exists, but he feels as if he can walk through walls and fall through chairs and sink through the floor. Sometimes he wonders if any of it is even real, if all that he cannot feel is nothing more than the delusion of a sick mind locked away in a padded room he cannot see.

But that's egocentric and ridiculous when the Troubles are all around him and the lives they take are so very real.

Still. For just a day, he got to be a man. Bound up in the shape of a human, enclosed in the warmth of his own frame and given definition and distinction by the nerves that sang to him of the world. And now he's once more lost, adrift, anchorless and formless in a shifting, ethereal plane that must be always, always taken seriously no matter how senseless it seems.

"I'm fine," he says even as he twirls the petals in his hand (testing to see if they will slide right through the useless skin on his palm).

Then a flare of sensation. A mark binding and enclosing him so that he can feel his hand. His hand, contained and in reach and _his_.

Nathan glances down, though he already knows what he will see. Audrey's hand on his, warm and comforting, cutting through his stoic façade.

"Nathan," she says.

That's all.

And any other day her touch would be a comfort. It'd be something he could cling to and remember and think back on when he lays down in a bed he can't feel with a blanket pulled over him out of sheer force of habit. Today, though…today it is only a reminder of all that he lost. Because once more she is the only thing he can feel and all those possibilities that had seemed to spread before him are now gone, crushed to dust or maybe just vanished like the mirage they really were.

"I hope I didn't act too weird," he says, relieved when her hand falls away from his (the ocean of formlessness is at least familiar). "I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"Why would I be uncomfortable?" she asks.

He nods but knows his attempt at a smile doesn't come through when her frown deepens.

"Nathan," she says again.

"I'm going to get home." He stands, the petals falling from his senseless hands. "Long day and all."

"Yeah." She has more to say, he can see the words piling up on her tongue, but she closes her lips over them and gives him a fake smile. "Good night, Nathan."

"Parker," he says.

That's all (and all there will ever be).


	2. Chapter 2

If there is one thing he loves most about living in Haven now that Audrey is here, it's the fact that he gets to help people. Before, he wrote stories about terrible things happening, usually with no logical explanation, and he listened to hurting people talking to others, heard their pain and their fear, but he couldn't do anything about any of it. Even the stories he wrote never helped because they were always carefully, perfectly prosaic (though he slipped in what he could get by the Teagues, did what he could on his own time: sitting with Conrad after he discovered Lester had taken his money; letting Laverne hug him on the anniversary of his mom's death; giving Hannah Driscoll the head's up when a new auditing job opened up; small things that he always hoped added up to _something_ ).

But now, following in Audrey's wake, he gets to do more than just observe. Now, he actually gets to help her _stop_ the Troubles.

It amazes him, watching her in action. She makes leaps of deduction that seem insane but almost always turn out right. She sees connections long before anyone should be able to. And always, always, she can get anyone to listen, to respond, to act (and that is the most amazing thing of all to Nathan, who can take hours to cobble together his couple-hundred word stories for the Herald and who can listen and watch but never knows what to say; does not know how to reach out when everyone seems so far away). She connects with people, and that is magic so much greater than the Troubles.

At first, this case is great both because he knows Louis Pufahl to be a good man and because the other woman has finally stopped tagging along wherever Audrey goes. Nathan is once more allowed to stand at her side rather than be relegated to the background.

"I found a place to live," Audrey tells him unexpectedly in a quiet moment, driving toward Louis's workshop.

"Oh?" Nathan waits a moment. He wants to tell her that he's glad she's staying, that this seems so much more permanent than the hotel. But how can he? Besides, surely she knows, doesn't she? She must know that he wants her here. "You going to give me an address or you just expect me to hunt you down to give you a ride to work?"

"It would be interesting to see how long it'd take you." She grins over at him. "But you already know the place. The _Gray Gull_."

"The _Gull_." Nathan looks away. "You're staying with Duke?"

"Not _with_ Duke, but he is going to be my landlord. I'm renting the space above the bar."

"And what does Evidence Crocker think about that?"

"Not sure." Parker's tone turns clipped, a bit more like the other Audrey's. Nathan wasn't surprised to learn Duke had a wife or that she would show up unannounced with an air of trouble in her wake (he's more surprised that Duke hasn't paid someone to give him a divorce yet), but Audrey was. More than surprised, she also seemed hurt. Nathan thinks back to the dinner invitations he's heard Duke extend to Audrey and swallows hard.

"Audrey Parker may move in with me, though," she says with a bit more cheer injected into her voice. "Though she has some strange decorating ideas."

"She's staying?" He shrugs his shoulders uneasily. "I thought…thought she'd head back to Boston. Or wherever the FBI wants her."

Audrey stares over at him. "Well, there's still a lot to figure out here."

"Ah. And what does the chief think about it?"

She snorts and shakes her head. "Oh, he has a lot to say but he communicates most of it through a glower, and _you_ may be able to translate that, but I choose to remain unenlightened."

"That's a first," he comments, and she actually laughs, her frown obliterated.

"You're pretty good at communicating lots with very little, too," she says (he wonders if that's really fondness he hears in her voice, and what it means if it is).

He offers a grunt, then lets himself smile when she laughs again.

Life in Haven is so much better now than it used to be.

(And that scares him, because nothing good ever stays so for long.)

* * *

Vince asked him, a few weeks back, why he followed Audrey everywhere. "You're interfering with her job," he said menacingly.

"I'm helping her," Nathan had replied. He'd steadfastly refused to look away from his computer where the cursor was blinking at him from an empty page. Before Audrey, he'd gotten his stories done in plenty of time; nowadays, his deadlines arrived much too quickly. "She doesn't know the town well."

"She's been here a while," Vince said. "She seems a quick learner. I'm sure she knows her way around well enough."

"Not the people. Connections. Recent events." Nathan pretended to type a line, though all that came up was a string of gibberish. "Besides, her car doesn't work."

"And none of the cops can drive her?"

"Don't need to," Nathan said. "I've got it."

"Vince," Dave had interrupted shortly. "We've got more important things to worry about. Weren't we going to go see Reverend Driscoll?"

Vince had allowed himself to be distracted, and Nathan pretended he didn't hear the threat hanging beneath the conversation. That was the way things worked between him and his employers for the most part (they spoke constantly and said so little while he always listened and learned almost nothing). He doesn't know why they bothered—they're friends with his dad so they must know he's warned Nathan off in almost the same way.

Don't get in Audrey's way. Don't distract her. Don't hold her back.

Nathan knows she's the one Haven needs, but that's why he makes sure to stick as close to her as she allows. Because as good as she is, it's dangerous helping the Troubled. Sometimes she does just need a chauffeur or a local, but sometimes (like today), she needs a shield. And that? Well, that's something he's ideally suited for.

He can't feel her through her clothes (sometimes, if it's thin enough, he can _almost_ feel, like a muffled sound heard through layers, but not true sensation), but he keeps his hand on her back anyway as he propels her ahead of him out of Louis's workshop. The piece of metal in his hands is probably heavy, judging by the way his arm seems inclined to dip, but Nathan keeps it up and ahead of him, covering Audrey's body as they dive through the rain of nails and shrapnel.

When the shop explodes behind them, Nathan catches the glimpse of fiery color behind him, smells the chemicals in the air, and keeps his body between Audrey and the workshop. The metal drops from his hand and he's engulfed in the smell of smoke, but he's still standing, his vision is still clear, and best of all, Parker's unharmed.

So what if he has a few nails embedded in his shoulder. They're only a minor annoyance, and right now, a distraction.

"No!" Parker exclaims. "Just because it doesn't hurt you doesn't mean you're not injured, Nathan!"

She seems exasperated, even wounded, as if the nails are in her own flesh (but they're _not_ , he made sure of that). He can't understand it. He's finally useful—finally has a purpose, a _reason_ for being here in Haven; he's finally more than just dead weight—so why is she upset? Why can't she see that it's so much better for _him_ to take the hits than for her to be hurt?

Doesn't she know she's _important_ (and beautiful and brilliant and worth any amount of wounds he can't even feel anyway)?

It's incomprehensible and even a bit frustrating. But strangely, her concern makes him smile.

* * *

In the end, though, life in Haven is still…well, life in Haven, and there's not much to laugh about when Nathan watches Louis forced to walk away from the woman he loves in order to save lives. He wonders if he could do that: walk away from happiness and hope and love to live a lonely life and all for the greater good he won't even get to really see.

Not that it will ever come up. Nathan's long since accepted the fact that no one in Haven will ever acknowledge his existence (besides Parker, but he's Troubled and she's immune and that's that).

"I hope he can be happy," he hears himself say.

"He did the right thing," Audrey replies.

"Doesn't make it any easier."

"Maybe not, but he's saving a lot of lives."

Nathan turns his head to look down at Parker, who will go to the station where the chief will hover over her desk and make snide comments; then head to the Gull where Duke will give her free drinks and flirt with her while pretending not to watch Evidence at the other side of the bar; then go home to her new apartment where she will laugh and exchange more shared stories with the other Audrey Parker. He looks at her, and for all her fears and dark moments, he thinks that Audrey probably doesn't even realize what it's like to be completely alone. She's the type who always has friends—maybe not close enough to ask for a ride any day or to always remember their names—but she inspires loyalty and she draws people to her and she can make a connection with anyone and everyone she meets.

"It's hard," Nathan tries to explain, "being alone."

She has a reply ready (he still doesn't think she understands, but then, he doesn't really want her to) but the radio crackles and Audrey answers it.

"It's the FBI agent, hon," Laverne says. "Crocker's got her at the station. You should come down. Something's wrong."

* * *

Guilt tastes bitter in his mouth so that Nathan knows he'll have to avoid pancakes for a while (no need to pollute his comfort food with this tragedy). He didn't know the other Audrey Parker, never let himself even look at her for long, and though he pored over her public records, he knows that doesn't equate to actually knowing a person. He wished she'd never come and wanted her gone and hoped never to hear about her again, but he didn't want _this_.

This. Her blank and empty, formless and aimless, a slate wiped clean of everything that came before. She's quiet and lost until the man Duke says she loved arrives, then there is a spark of something and a wistful hint of memory. And Nathan turns away, tries to shrink and disappear into a corner of the PD station, somewhere out of the way, stashed beside a spider-webbing crack crawling up the wall (out of sight, out of mind; a credo that worked well for him before that article in the _Herald_ to flush out that Troubled serial killer).

He's glad the other Audrey Parker has something to cling to. No need to be jealous, really, when he still knows who he is and what formed and shaped him. Too small, too petty, to admit to a bit of envy when she has to rebuild her entire life from scratch (but at least she has someone to help her).

Nathan tells himself that he is upset because Parker is. Because he feels bad about how he pretended this other woman didn't exist. Because he was busy with other things and didn't help this other Audrey even in the small way that Duke did.

But deep down he knows the truth. He knows that he isn't upset because this other Audrey Parker is gone. He's scared and worried and nervous because if this other woman can be erased as if she never was…then who is to say that _his_ Parker can't be too? How can he possibly protect her from this new danger when it will not be so easy as holding a metal shield and letting the nails and flame find a home in _his_ flesh instead?

He can't lose Audrey. _Haven_ can't lose her.

Nathan watches Parker hug the woman goodbye, watches Duke clasp Parker's shoulder in a comforting gesture, and he begins to think that maybe he should find the _other_ Lucy Ripley too. Just in case. Just to see.

(Because the other credo that serves him well is that to be forewarned is to be forearmed.)

* * *

Despite its peculiarities, Nathan loves Haven. It's his hometown. It's familiar. He likes knowing exactly what's down each street, who lives where, where the best overlooks are, what the history is of each shop. Even knowing that there are things he never realized moving beneath the surface, Nathan holds a lot of sentimental fondness for Haven.

Most of all, though, Nathan knows that Haven needs _someone_ to love it.

It bothers Nathan, sometimes, when Duke says he hates it here, or when he overhears Evidence Crocker wondering what the town's appeal is, or when he realizes that there are people who want nothing more than to move away and never look back. When Audrey just laughs at Haven's idiosyncrasies, Nathan feels some knot inside him loosen and ease, the same knot that tightens painfully whenever she complains about all the secrets. Haven can only be better when Audrey's there, and he _wants_ it to be better.

Much as Nathan loves the town, though, he's not a huge fan of the days when everything's turned upside down and he can't tell what's real and what isn't (he already has enough of that happening in his life just waking up in the morning).

Dave comes up with some weird excuse about Nathan being better to interview the mayor since he was the one at the baseball game where electricity exploded everywhere and nearly killed a kid. "You go," Dave says (though he and Vince never trust Nathan with the front page stories they craft so meticulously or the important interviews they must know Nathan can't guarantee getting seeing as how few people actually show up to the appointments they make with him).

Nathan squints at Dave, but eventually heads to the hospital, figuring that the mayor can't avoid him if he doesn't know he's coming.

Everything after that seems completely rational, routinely ordinary, until Audrey (who was already at the hospital investigating, of course) stares at him in a way she never has before and tells him he just agreed to write a puff piece for the mayor.

"What?" Nathan blinks. "No, that's not what he…he wouldn't… _I_ wouldn't do that. But…"

And it doesn't make sense anymore. (He can't help but wonder if it ever would have occurred to him on his own that he was acting peculiarly or if the Teagues would have had to shred the gushing article on their own.)

Audrey's already moving on, ten steps ahead of him and seemingly unfazed when the mayor, that great man, dies right in front of them. Nathan watches her head off with the mayor's son (who of all the people in the world does not deserve this horrible day), and wishes he had an excuse to go with her. Not just because Chris Brody is such a great man (too great, really, for Nathan to risk anyone seeing him with the town pariah; better by far for Parker to stay with Brody and protect him), but because he wants her to wake him up again. To tell him what's real. To trust him to be able to pull out of any mind-altering Trouble the instant she warns him about its effects.

(First that fear-inspiring Trouble, he thinks, freezing him in his tracks, and now this charm Trouble baffling him, and Nathan wants to help, but he's been useless lately, no help at all to her or to Haven.)

It occurs to him that before Audrey came to town, he could have been affected countless times and never known it. Ignorance is bliss, or so they say, but Nathan decides he likes knowing better (likes waking up from his insanity to find clarity in Audrey's eyes intent on him). He would rather the Troubles burn and scar his body than affect his thoughts.

His mind's all he has left.

* * *

Nathan hates Chris Body. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he'd only slightly dislike him, or even (impossible as it seems) like him well enough—just so long as he didn't love him so irrationally every time the guy got close enough for Nathan to meet his eyes. Nathan will never know what he really thinks of the former mayor's son, because he's never given the choice.

Not that it matters.

Parker likes the guy, and that's that. All this time Nathan's been worried about Duke constantly hanging around, and here comes Brody to sweep in and change everything.

Just the month before, Nathan had felt secure enough in his and Parker's friendship to invite her over for his mother's special pancakes. They'd spent lunch hours in his Bronco with food and coffee in their laps, and she'd stand outside her hotel room for an hour talking to him when he dropped her off at the end of the day. Now, Nathan looks down at his phone displaying the fact that he's called her a dozen times in the past day and she hasn't answered any of them. Ordinarily, he'd be panicking right about now, calling the chief and trying to get search parties organized. But…

But Brody's here, and Parker had said they were going for drinks after she dropped off some paperwork at some wedding. So she's probably just busy. Or driving. Or otherwise occupied. Whichever, it's none of Nathan's business.

And he knew this would happen, didn't he? His dad had reminded him that Haven was more likely to disappoint him than give him anything good. Both the chief and the Teagues warned him that Audrey would move beyond him, acclimated enough to not need his help anymore, all but ordering him to let her go when it happened. So it's not like he's unprepared. Maybe if his Trouble had stayed gone… But no use in considering hypotheticals. Things are the way they are, and that's that.

He should have learned his lesson a long time ago (he should have known better than to hope).

* * *

"The Rev's been talking," Vince says as Nathan tries to start up Dave's battered old van. Every time he gets the call to come bail them out, he's grateful all over again for his trusty Bronco. Sure, it takes some love and attention to keep it going, but Nathan willingly gives it in order to not have to worry about breaking down on the side of a winding road with a crack spreading across the asphalt.

"The Rev's always talking," Nathan says shortly. His day's already bad enough without bringing Reverend Driscoll into it.

"He's mentioned your name," Vince clarifies.

Nathan busies himself getting out and looking under the van's hood. Not really expecting anything, he's surprised when he sees the sparkplugs loose. Easy enough fix, then, but that means Dave probably hasn't had time to talk Vince out of pursuing this line of conversation yet.

Sure enough, when Nathan opens the door to let Dave know it should be good to go, Vince is staring right at him.

"You can't ignore this forever."

"What's to ignore?" Nathan snaps. "The Rev has never liked me, and he's not shy about letting everyone know when he disapproves of anything."

"You know there's more to it than that," Vince replies, and something inside Nathan cracks (probably his self-control).

"Really?" Nathan jerks the van door fully open so he can step closer to Vince in the passenger seat. Anger simmers slow and hot, boiling up to explode out into the air, and Nathan hates it when he loses control like his (hates feeling Max Hansen's rage and the chief's stress pouring through him until his own rational choices are consumed and forgotten), but there's no holding back, not now, when this explosion has been building for so long.

"Really?" he demands. "How would I know that? How _could_ I know that when no one tells me a single thing about _any_ of the secrets in this town? The chief let me think I was sick— _fatally_ sick—rather than tell me about the Troubles. The Rev talks about me behind my back without letting me in on _why_ he hates me so much. The whole town punishes me for a crime I don't even know I committed. And you—" He laughs, a harsh sound that chokes him and scrapes his throat raw if he could only feel it. "Half the time I think you only gave me a job to keep an eye on me, occasionally I hope you did it because the chief asked you to, but really, I'm pretty sure you have your own plans—or punishment—in store for me. So don't pretend like you think I know _anything_ when you two are the ones keeping me in the dark."

"Nathan," Dave tries, all conciliation and hesitation and reason. "Your dad let you believe you were sick because that seemed to be what you _needed_ to believe."

He's not sure what he was expecting (if he expected anything at all from his outburst), but he's surprised anyway. Nathan stares at Dare before slowly shaking his head. "Right. Of course."

"Nathan—" Vince begins, but Nathan talks right over him.

"Of course you'd be more interested in defending _him_ than actually telling me anything. Fine. You know what? Forget it."

"Nathan, the Rev won't—"

"You can start the van up now," he says. "If I were you, I'd go back to town instead of trying to make it to the wedding in this junkpile."

And he turns and walks away, fleeing to the familiar refuge of his Bronco (hiding until he can pull the shredded remains of his self-control up in makeshift armor to protect him from the town he loves).

(Later, he'll think he should have begun preparing armor to protect him from Audrey instead, who, it turns out, can hurt him so much worse than even Haven can.)

* * *

It's nothing more than petty revenge for that tantrum when Dave and Vince assign Nathan to speak at a Career Day the next day. Nathan likes babies, sure, and he doesn't mind talking to kids one on one (before they're old enough to learn better than to admit to Nathan's existence). But talking in front of a whole group of kids with a judgmental teacher at his back?

(But, no, it's more than that, isn't it. He's self-aware enough to realize how to use his single-mindedness and resulting tunnel vision to overcome his dislike of public speaking. So it's the school that's the problem. These hallways that soaked up his blood and lockers that muffled his cries and the lingering ghosts of taunting playmates, echoes of his dad's disappointed sighs.)

"I don't think," he begins, but Vince shuts him up with a level stare.

"You seem to be positively verbose these days," he says. "Might as well put all those opinions of yours to good use."

"Just go to Career Day, Nathan," Dave says mildly, and Nathan knows there's no use in trying to talk his way out of it when both brothers are in agreement. Maybe going will be enough for them to let the incident die (though knowing the Teagues as well as he does, Nathan's not holding his breath), so he squares his shoulders, ignores the way his keys rattle in his hand, and drives to the school.

Relief is quick and overwhelming when he sees Audrey pulling up in her car. He even smiles in greeting, glad enough to want her to _know_ how pleased he is not to be facing this alone. Or just to see her (he saw the front page news this morning about a poisonous plant ruining the Keegan-Novelli wedding, and he's familiar enough with Haven's cover-ups to know something much worse must have happened; he stayed up half the night waiting for Audrey to call and fill him in on what really happened).

"Parker," he says, but his smile falters when Brody climbs out of her passenger seat.

Of course. Of course she didn't need Nathan with her at the wedding to face down poisonous plants (to find and help whatever Troubled person it was causing it), not when she has Brody and his charm. Of course she didn't call Nathan to let him know she's okay, not when Brody, if he's with her this early in the morning, probably stayed the night.

Nathan shoves his hands into his pockets and refuses to acknowledge the pit in his stomach. He wishes he hadn't already called out to her.

"Nathan, you got roped into doing this thing, too?" she asks, all smiling and happy (and Nathan has never wished Audrey _un_ happy, but he could do with just a few less smiles this morning). Brody whispers something in her ear, but Nathan doesn't see her reaction, too busy averting his eyes before he can get swept up in Brody's Trouble. The only thing to make a public speech (one that will, he realizes with a sinking feeling, be witnessed by both Audrey and Brody) is if he has to give it while gushing over Chris Brody.

If she were alone, Nathan would tell her about Vince's warning (threat?) and their vindictive assignment. As it is, though, he only shrugs. "Someone had to do it. Heard there was Trouble at the Keegan-Novelli wedding."

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Audrey says, perhaps a bit quickly.

"Oh, sure," Brody adds, "just a bit of the power of love, some handholding—even between Duke and his wife, surprisingly—and we only got to our date about twelve hours late."

He hears something like a slap (probably Parker smacking Brody's arm), but Nathan doesn't look behind him. Good thing he wasn't there the day before, he thinks. Sounds like he would have been the odd man out (as per usual, but he's forgotten that, it seems, in these past few months since Parker arrived in town).

Nathan walks ahead of Audrey and Brody the whole way to the classroom. They whisper behind him, loud enough he could eavesdrop if he wanted to, but Nathan purposely lets a tune spread through his mind and distract him (a Patsy Cline song, though he pretends it's only happenstance that it's the first song he thought of).

Audrey is charming with the kids, open and friendly and so eagerly sincere that Nathan can't believe every kid in the room isn't clamoring to be a police officer (he knows _he_ was at their age; he is _now_ , watching her, wishing he could be up there beside her instead of tucked away in the back of the classroom). But then Audrey smiles that mischievous smirk of hers and calls Brody to the front. Nathan figures no one will notice (or care) if he makes his own presentation, and he slips away. If the Teagues find out he didn't speak, he'll just let them think he was caught up in Brody's charm. It has to work for him once.

But in just a few moments, Nathan wishes he'd left earlier (maybe he could have saved the little kid with green sneakers) or left later (maybe he could have stopped Parker from rushing right over to the accident scene). Forgetting about Brody, Nathan blocks Audrey from stepping forward, feels her hand clutch at his arm (muffled and distant through his jacket), jerks back a bit as her hair catches against his chin, as her warm breath stutters against his neck (he can feel it, everything about her, but most of all, her helplessness and guilt). "Parker," he says—

* * *

"Parker." Nathan actually smiles as he greets her, so relieved he will not be facing this alone, but the smile falters when she grabs his jacket sleeve and pulls him after her.

"Nathan, I have to tell you something and it's going to be really hard to believe but I need you to help so you _have_ to believe me, all right?"

He frowns down at her. "Is this about whatever happened at the Keegan-Novelli wedding? Is there still Trouble?"

"No, this is different." She points to a couple arguing in a car, pulls him aside as a kid on a bike nearly crashes into him, then meets his eyes almost desperately. "Nathan, this day is repeating itself, and if I don't fix it, a kid is going to die again."

"Repeating," he says.

"Yes! I thought I'd just had a vivid dream at first, but _everything_ is the same, and this is Haven, and…please believe me, Nathan."

There are a hundred possible responses to that, but Nathan looks at Audrey (desperate and strained and anxious), and really, it's not the most impossible thing to have happened in Haven, so he nods. "All right, so it's a Groundhog Day Trouble. Do you think it's the kid's?"

"The kid died," Parker says, "so no, but I'm sure it's connected." She pauses, then grabs his hand and squeezes. Nathan jerks, taken aback by the flood of sensation (by the fact that she reached for his hand at all). "Thank you, Nathan."

He swallows and desperately tries to look unaffected when she drops his hand. "So…" He clears his throat. "So what do you need me to do?"

* * *

They spend the entire morning looking for green sneakers on a kid, Nathan coasting along in the wake of Audrey's badge, but it doesn't matter. In the end, Nathan runs around a street corner and sees Audrey hunched over the broken body of Duke.

Nathan stares and stares, but he cannot make it seem real. Duke has been his tormenter and bully, his friend and betrayer, but he has never been a victim (even old and dying with wispy hair that waved in the wind, he was stalwart and cocky and undefeated).

"Duke," Nathan says (and what else can he say? what words can he possibly string together to make sense of his fractured and tumultuous relationship with Duke Crocker?), but no more because Duke is gone, just like that, and Nathan has never been more glad of a Trouble.

"Parker," he says over the sound of her crying. "He'll be all right. You'll save him."

"What if I can't?" she cries in a broken voice he's never heard from her before. "What if—"

"You will," he says firmly. "Parker—"

* * *

"We're repeating the same day?" Nathan shakes his head and accelerates as he drives Parker to the station. "So…what? If the chief sets up barricades around downtown, we'll be able to jumpstart us forward again?"

"We'll be able to save everyone," she corrects. Nathan doesn't need the sidelong glance he gives her to know that she is small and pale, her hands shaking in her lap, her shoulders hunched. "I can't let anyone die this time."

"You won't," he says confidently. He wants to tell her that even if someone dies, it's certainly not her fault, but he knows that's not what she needs to hear right now. She needs hope and confidence and a steady hand to back her, and even if he couldn't be there for her during whatever happened at that wedding the day before, she needs him today.

"Nathan, I…" Her voice trails off, jagged and unsure.

"It's all right, Audrey," he promises. "The chief will set up the barricades and you'll figure this out. You always do."

Her lips twitch in the suggestion of a smile (her hand twitches as if about to reach for his) as she meets his gaze. " _We_ always do."

* * *

Nathan hears the car coming, but not in time to do more than dive out of the way. He sees splinters go flying past from the smashed barricade, but he can't close his eyes to protect them because Audrey needs to know what the car looks like. Unfortunately, it swerves around the corner before he can catch the plate number.

"Nathan?" Audrey's running toward him, frantic and scared and everything he doesn't want her to be, so he hurriedly rises to his feet to reassure her.

"I'm fine," he tries to say, but there are black spots encroaching on his vision and vertigo sweeping through him, and his view of the streets changes so that he thinks he's collapsing.

"Nathan!" Audrey's screaming, and her face is so close, tears in those blue, blue eyes, and Nathan wants more than anything to make her smile. He'd promised her everything would be all right. He'd told her she'd save everyone. He needs to let her know he doesn't blame her for this, needs to tell her that he knows absolutely that she will save him. But there's no time, not when she needs the description of the car more than all his platitudes. He only wishes he could have gotten the plate number too.

"Nathan, I'm going to fix this," she says, fierce and savage (and scared). "I'm not going to let you die."

She's staring down at the wound Nathan can't see or feel (and how strange is this, to be defeated by something that makes no discernible impact on him?) but he can smell the coppery tang of blood. And he can feel Audrey's hand on his neck. That's where she touched him when he first realized he could feel her. Her fingers on his neck, reaching up into his hair, anchoring him to the body he's all but forgotten.

She's still crying (still looks as wracked with guilt as if she doesn't realize that she's the best thing to ever happen to him) and Nathan knows he has to give her something. Anything.

"It's okay," he tells her, relieved when he hears the words actually audible and coherent. "The only thing I feel is you."

But she's not comforted or reassured. She's horrified and uncertain, and how had he forgotten that this isn't anything but a source of discomfort to her, a burden she doesn't want?

"Parker," he tries to say, but nothingness envelops him—

* * *

"Of course I'm going with you," he says, impatiently. "You'll need a second set of eyes look—"

"No!" Parker presses forward, backing Nathan against the door of his Bronco. When she reaches out, Nathan has to swallow a gasp. Her hand is warm against his, soft and textured, weighted…and trembling. There are tears in her eyes and a quaver in her voice and even when she told him she'd been Lucy Ripley, even when the other Audrey Parker was erased, she wasn't this shaken. This scared. This fragile.

"I've already watched you die once," she whispers. "If that happens again…and we don't get a repeat…"

He hates this. He can't, in good conscience (as her friend or as the partner he wants to be) ignore a plea as heartfelt as this, but he hates being useless. He hates standing aside and watching her struggle and fight and _hurt_.

(And deeper, darker, he is afraid that after she didn't need him for whatever happened at the Keegan-Novelli wedding, and if she doesn't need him today, she will realize that she does not need him _at all_.)

Still, when he nods in grudging agreement, Audrey takes in what sounds like her first breath since she saw him driving up to the school.

"Thank you," she says, and for a few minutes, that's enough. Until time turns to sludge and his phone doesn't ring and Nathan can think of nothing but Audrey alone downtown where an out of control car is due to be careening wildly into whoever gets in its path—and as immune as Parker is to the Troubles, her scraped hand proves that won't do her a lick of good against thousands of pounds of metal and plastic. He has too much time, here on the sidelines, to imagine what will happen if this day resets again and he drives downtown only to find Audrey's body mangled on the street with no explanation, no memory, no car around to make any sense of it. He imagines kneeling beside her body and raging and shutting down and finding himself alone and purposeless. And he imagines it repeating, over and over again, until the body he finds is rotting and bears no resemblance to Parker at all, and still he will not know why she is there. He will not know how to save her.

"Parker!" he barks into the phone before her first ring can even finish.

"I think we did it, Nathan!" she exults, happy and hopeful and _alive_. "It's past the time the other accidents happened. I think we might have—" She cuts off suddenly (Nathan feels light-headed), then snaps, "Chris! What are you doing here? Nathan, I'll call you back."

"Parker, be careful! Parker!"

He tries calling her, once, again, again, but he thinks about the worry in her voice when she said Brody's name (and the reason she didn't call him last night, or as many last nights ago as it really was), and he's not surprised when she doesn't answer. He hopes this is the day, the cycle that finally breaks it all, though, because he's afraid Audrey won't be able to take much more of this. She shouldn't _have_ to endure anymore. He can't imagine what it's like for Parker—

* * *

Nathan thinks it's a shame that of all the days he gets to remember, it's the one where Parker doesn't actually let him do anything.

"So you told me what's going on, but you don't actually want me to help at all?" Nathan asks incredulously.

"You _can_ do something!" she snaps. "You can stay alive." She's breaking under the strain, and his irritation is too small to survive her desperation.

"You're going to figure this out," he tells her.

"That's what you said the last time," she replies, "and the time before that."

"Well," Nathan shrugs, "I'm sure I meant it then, too."

"I just…I can't lose anyone else, Nathan."

He takes the risk (this day may end up being reset after all) and takes her shoulders in his hands, hoping she'll lean into him. Hoping he can ease some of the burden crushing her. "You know what's causing it now. You always help people, Parker. This isn't any different."

"Please," she begs him, not leaning into him but not pulling away either. "Please don't go down there."

"I won't," he promises. And he doesn't, though it's the hardest promise he's ever kept.

* * *

"No, I failed," she says. She can't even look at him. Maybe she just doesn't want to burden him with all the bad feelings and thoughts inside her, but Nathan thinks that she doesn't believe she deserves to look him in the eye. Like she got him killed instead of saved his life.

She's the only one who knows when Haven's changed, the only one who can fix things when the Troubles sweep up the whole town. Clear-sighted and unaffected…except when it comes to herself. Then she can't see clearly at all (caught up in blurred reflections and imprinted insecurities). So Nathan, vulnerable as is, will see _her_. He'll tell her what he sees and when she's wrong and when she's in danger. He can't save Haven, but maybe…maybe he can save her.

"You could never fail me," he says. It's the most honest thing he's ever said.

And now she does look at him, startled and uncertain. But just a bit hopeful.

She _wants_ to believe. So he doesn't look away, just keeps staring, letting her see his sincerity.

But Brody comes out and then Nathan _has_ to look away to protect himself (not from Brody's Trouble, but from what Audrey's eyes might reveal of her heart when she looks at the other man). As gracefully as he can, Nathan slips away from the couple and heads to the bar.

Remembering what Audrey said about Duke dying, Nathan actually clues him into Brody's charm Trouble. Or maybe he does it because he and Duke are in the same boat now, swept to the side while Brody takes center stage, there to hold Parker's hand as she walks through retreating roots, there for her to hug when she wakes from nightmares to find him alive and whole. And Nathan's got nothing against Brody (at least, not that he can remember), but it's hard to let go.

Hard, but Audrey _needs_ someone to hold her together right now. She needs emotional support and a shoulder to lean on, and she deserves to have someone who loves her for her (not because she can reach past his Trouble).

Keeping those thoughts foremost in his mind, Nathan nods a goodbye to Duke and slips out the side door.

It's time for him to wake up from his own dreams. Time to remember what life in Haven is really like.


	3. Chapter 3

"Why's Pinocchio here?" Duke asks when Nathan follows Audrey into the _Gull_. "You deputize him or something?"

Nathan ignores the taunt (Duke is one of the only people who knows just how badly Nathan wanted to be a cop, so it doesn't surprise him that he uses it against him now) in favor of looking around for Evi. He sees plenty of proof that there was a shootout here like Duke claims, but no sign of the erstwhile Mrs. Crocker.

"Come on, Duke," Audrey says playfully. "When you called, you made it sound like I'd need all the help I could get."

"Yeah, well, when I said 'bring reinforcements,' I was thinking more like 'people who actually carry guns.' Speaking of…" Duke swivels in Nathan's direction, and Nathan hopes he's not tensing up. Hopes he's still and expressionless, as impassive as they all think and expect him to be. "You know, Nathan, I've heard people talking about you. Lots of little birdies whispering about the journalist who's there at every crime scene but never seems to write about anything but the farmer's market and an art show out by the moose farm."

Suddenly Duke's unusual attention and the resurgence of his cruel jibes make a lot more sense.

Nathan gives him a small nod (confirmation that he's received the message) and shoves his hands into his pockets, doing his best to fade back into invisibility. Since Parker came to town, he's gotten a bit out of practice (afraid that if he fades too much, Audrey will forget him like everyone else does), but years of habit have to count for something.

Audrey looks from Duke to Nathan and back again. "Someone want to clue me in on what's going on? Why do people care so much if Nathan's helping me?"

Duke smiles his charmer smile. "Oh, in a small town, nothing's ever really forgotten, just shelved for later."

"Uh-huh, and neither one of you are going to give me anything, are you?"

Duke shows his hands in a helpless gesture. Nathan just refuses to meet her eyes.

"Yeah," she says. "Sometimes it's easy to tell you guys are true Havenites."

Nathan winces away from the implication, but Duke just grins. "I will, however," he says, "tell you all about the guy who came in, asked for a drink, and started shooting when I told him the blender was broken."

Audrey allows the subject change, but Nathan knows she won't forget this any more than Haven really forgets him.

* * *

"Maybe I shouldn't go with you," he says when she wants to head for Cornell Stanton's house.

Audrey stares at him, her brow wrinkled. "Is this about what Duke said? Because I don't care that you're a journalist. You're as good as a detective, Nathan—I still think you could _be_ one—and there's no one else I trust more to have my back."

It's moments like these that Nathan forgets he can feel her touch (forgets that this is all there will ever be between them). She doesn't need to reach out to make him _feel_. His body is suffused with pleasure, his head spins with surprise, his vision is spattered with shyness, and it's all too much, an overload that leaves him motionless and mute.

Parker smiles at him (like she sees past his frozen exterior) and brushes her hand down his sleeve to squeeze his fingers in a tight grasp. Now it's not only his inside world that explodes with sensation, but his outside confines as well, a blaze of warmth and pressure and fondness, and Nathan would follow her into fire and blood and darkness alike just to keep his world so vibrant and alive.

Forget Duke's warning and the Teagues' maneuverings and Haven itself. Forget it all. Forget everything but Audrey and her smile and her faith.

* * *

"Duke was right," Audrey says hours and hours later. She hovers over him to make sure the EMTs don't just abandon him mid-bandage (but Nathan lets himself believe that she does it, too, because she wants to be close to him). "I shouldn't have dragged you along. You didn't even want to come. If I'd let you stay out of this, Cornell never would have hurt—"

"Parker," he says, enough to silence her. She meets his gaze, her own worried even though she didn't see the cracks riddling the abandoned hotel or the small chasm opening up behind her, quick and jagged. Nathan forgets about the EMTs around him, ignores the voice inside his head warning him not to initiate touch (not to scare her away; or worse, find out that she _won't_ be scared and then be unable to resist succumbing to irresistible temptation). He reaches out and grabs her hand. This time, he doesn't let himself fall into the bottomless well of sensation—he keeps his eyes fixed on her, tries to touch _her_ down deep and secret, the place where she bears her own form of numbness.

"Parker, I'm fine. Better he knocked me out so that you could talk him down."

"No." She shakes her head, her hand tightening on his. "No, Nathan's that's not—"

"It all turned out okay," he interrupts before she can work herself up again. "I'm fine, you're fine, and we stopped a murderer. And Duke's okay, too," he begrudgingly adds (payment for the warning Duke gave him). "I'd say that's a good day's work."

Her smile is small and wondering, as if she's never seen him before (except it's not the first time she's directed this smile his way). "Yeah, I'd say so. Next time, though, try _not_ to get knocked upside the head."

Because she said 'next time,' Nathan's smile remains, even when her hand drops from his.

* * *

"He almost got himself killed and that could have landed you in a lot of trouble," the chief says in that tone of voice suggesting he's already made up his mind and all the wind and ocean and willpower in the world won't make him change it. "You need a _real_ partner, Audrey. A cop."

"You could sound a little more worried considering he's your son," Audrey points out scathingly. "And I don't want a partner. I don't _need_ a partner."

"Really? So that's why every case you end up calling in either Nathan or that smuggler, Crocker—or _both_ —to help you? I'd say you need a partner desperately, one that might actually help you fill out some of that paperwork you're drowning in."

Nathan didn't mean to find himself eavesdropping, not really. He'd finished filling out his witness statement (as familiar to him now as the _Haven Herald's_ format) and then gone to see if Audrey was ready to go. And, sure, he'd noticed that his dad had gone into Parker's office, but he assumed they were simply discussing the Cornell case. The sound of the chief mentioning his own failures is so routine it hadn't occurred to Nathan that he should back away from the doorway. But now he's caught, arrested and breathless (when sparkles dance in his vision, he makes himself inhale) and unable to move.

Because Parker's defending him. Standing up for him. Speaking for him in a town that assumes he has nothing to say and no reason to protest and never listens to what he does say (even his articles are only read, he's convinced, to reassure themselves that he's still contained where they placed him).

"I call Nathan because I trust him," Audrey says, "and he could stand to hear you say the same thing every once in a while, you know. He could _be_ a cop, Garland, if you gave him any encouragement whatsoever. He'd make a—"

"No." The word is flat. Final. Despite himself, Nathan feels his thoughts shut down at the familiar dismissal. When the taste of copper floods his mouth, he eases his jaw open. He's heard this so many times, he doesn't know why it still hurts.

"Why not?" Audrey demands, always pushing. "He'd definitely be a lot better at filling out that paperwork you're always harping on me about."

"No," Garland says again. "A cop's got to be clear-headed and impartial, not to mention calm. Nathan's too irrational, too willing to take the obvious answer and refuse to look deeper. Besides, no one in Haven would accept him as a cop."

Audrey's voice is so quiet Nathan would miss it if his hearing weren't so acute. "You're wrong," she says, "and I wish you could see that—for both your sakes."

"Is that so?" Garland snaps. " _I'm_ wrong? You're the one who's dragged him into every dangerous situation this town has to offer—you've got his picture in the paper and a target painted on his back every time he stands next to you—and _I'm_ the one who's hurting him?"

Nathan can't stand quiet anymore.

"Stop it," he says, his tone low and deep and sharp.

The chief snaps his head around to face him, but Audrey averts her eyes.

"Don't you put that on her," Nathan commands him. Behind his back, the station falls quiet, probably shocked to hear him speak. Or yell, as the case may be. "I was in dangerous situations long before Audrey came to town, only then I didn't have anyone watching my back. You sure weren't doing it. Just like you never tell me anything. Just like you never think I can actually do anything worthwhile. But Parker does, so don't blame her for your own faults."

"Nathan, I know we're never going to get along, but there are more important things going on that—"

"Just stop!" Nathan yells. His dad tries to touch him and Nathan throws up a warding hand, crackling with anger. "Stop putting me off with half truths! You couldn't even bother to tell me when my real dad was in town—why should I believe you'll tell me anything now?"

He wants to stay. Wants to plant his feet and choose his battleground (at Parker's side, always) and fight this out once and for all. But he can feel everyone's eyes on him, can hear the whispers starting behind him, and he _knows_ what he looks like—he knows that he holds his anger and his hurt in so tightly that when they come spilling out, they look melodramatic and as irrational as the chief thinks he is, and he doesn't want to be _that_ person, the crazy mouthing off and throwing tantrums while everyone around him rolls their eyes and shakes their heads and misses everything he says. So he turns on his heel and stalks away (and knows better than to think his dad will actually follow him).

Behind him, Audrey murmurs something, hears the chief say his name (in a tone he's never heard from him before, almost broken), but he keeps moving. One foot in front of the other, his body melting through whatever might be in his way, which could be anything since his vision is hazed in red. (Running, always running, and he calls Duke the coward, but Nathan's the one who's never managed to face anything head-on.) Everyone pulls back from him, as abstract and unreal as the bruises on his palms.

Audrey finds him leaning on his hands, head hanging over the hood of his Bronco, trying desperately to shove everything back down to its worn prison.

"I know you have a right to be mad," she says without preamble, "but Garland Wuornos is your real dad. Max Hansen isn't."

And Nathan sags against blue metal, so relieved he doesn't even know how to process it.

(It's why he hates getting angry, losing his temper, lashing out at anyone, deserved or not: that he will be no better than Max Hansen. That he is a psychotic sadist in the making, hereditarily predisposed to rend and burn and wound, to inflict emotionally what he cannot feel physically. Better to be silent, to be passive, to be a scapegoat or a martyr or a pariah, than to be Max Hansen Jr.)

"I know," he says (but he wonders how she does, how she sees him so clearly when no one else ever does, not even his dad, real or birth). He cannot look at her, stares instead at the crack that starts in the asphalt under his Bronco and extends toward the station. It matches the one in his bedroom wall (and the abandoned hotel, and the station walls, and Potter's Field, and Duke's boat, and the road where Audrey first came to town, and a dozen other places Nathan's documented and photographed).

"You okay?" Audrey asks. She leans back against the Bronco with her arms folded across her chest, facing him so that when he can bring himself to look up, she will be there.

"I'm fine," Nathan says. Then he smiles. "And I know I'm not a cop, but…well, I do kind of feel like you're my partner."

She smiles, so bright he _has_ to turn just to bask in it. "And I'm not a journalist, but sometimes I almost think I should share the byline with you."

It's not until they're on the road, headed for the _Gull_ , that Nathan quietly asks, "You really think I could be a detective?"

"The best," she answers.

It's enough to make him ignore (yet again; for just a little longer) all his suspicions about those multiplying cracks.

* * *

Haven's big enough to hide a multitude of secrets, but small enough that everyone's heard of the Glendowers and their pseudo-cult. Nathan used to envy the children who got to stay home and do schoolwork in quiet and privacy (safe from taunts and avoidance and tacks slapped into his back with deceptive friendliness). Now he wonders what horrible Trouble they're hiding, contained behind fences and isolation.

"Your dad's in a mood," Parker comments as she joins him in the Bronco. "More than usual," she amends when he arches a brow at her. "Have you two not made up yet?"

"Not much point," he says, handing her a cup of coffee. "He won't admit anything happened, and I have too many questions to just apologize and move on."

"Questions?" He catches her frown out of the corner of his eye. She takes a tentative sip of coffee before placing it next to his in the cup-holder. "A little longer."

Nathan nods, though he doesn't look away from the road. "Yeah, questions. You know, interrogative statements designed for obtaining information."

She smacks him on the shoulder but laughs at the same time. "Thanks, Webster. No, I mean…I always have tons of questions, but…it's kind of hard to narrow them down. And we've already established that he won't say a word about the Colorado Kid case except how old it is. Seriously, trying to get anything out of your dad is like beating my head against a brick wall. Except more painful."

"He knew Lucy."

Audrey stares at him. "He said that?"

"No, but I know he worked that case, and Lucy Ripley was front and center in that photo, which means if nothing else, the chief interviewed her as a witness. But…"

"But what?" Audrey demands.

Nathan hesitates, knowing what he's about to unleash. But he's stayed quiet too long already (the cracks are only growing more prolific) while he waits for his dad to come through for him. It's clear that he won't. He never will. And it's time for Nathan to admit that.

"I think he _really_ knew Lucy," Nathan finally says. "He looks at you sometimes like he _knows_ you. And he accepted you into Haven and the PD way too fast. The chief never lets anyone in like that."

"So you think he knows? He knows that I'm Lucy—or, _was_ Lucy—that she's not my mom?"

"He didn't seem fazed at all by the other Audrey Parker except for how to get her out of town without spilling all our secrets." Nathan chances a look over at Audrey, winces when he sees her silent and thoughtful. The calm before the storm, he knows, and he will be swept up in her wake (this time, he's leaving himself no escape from this confrontation).

"He's pretty chummy with the Teagues, too," she muses.

"With Dave." Nathan nods. "There's always been some kind of tension between him and Vince."

"All right." Audrey turns in her seat to face him, her eyes steely, her chin set. "So we figure out this Leif Glendower case and then we talk to the chief. Together?"

"Yeah," he says (turns his mind away from memories of the chief surrounding him in a hug from behind, enclosing a little boy who couldn't feel anything in his familiar scent and the gravelly sound of his voice; that was a long time ago). "Together."

* * *

Turns out, they don't have to wait that long to talk to Garland. Nathan pulls up to the station as Audrey tells him to pick her up after dark ("I'll bet you look good in black," she teases, and he's once more struck by how she never lets anything Haven throws at them faze her), and the chief comes stumping down the steps of the station, barreling toward them with his bushy brows drawn down in a severe expression. Nathan recognizes the look and hurriedly swings out of the Bronco so Audrey doesn't have to face him alone. Except Garland doesn't seem concerned with Audrey at all (as always, it is Nathan who is found wanting).

"The Glendowers?" the chief exclaims. "You went out to see Cole—alone? No backup? Barely a weapon between you? I thought I taught you better than that, Nathan. Of all the stupid—"

"Hey!" Audrey says hotly, sliding between Nathan and his dad. Nathan means to stop her (he can fight this battle, at least, on his own), but the feel of her hair against his chin and her body heat emanating toward him renders him speechless. "Going out there was my idea—"

"Of course it was," Garland says, "but Nathan should have known enough to stop you. The Glendowers are private—approaching them should be done only with the greatest care. If you'd bothered to tell me where you were headed, I could have handled this."

Audrey begins a furious rebuttal, the chief's attention all on her, which gives Nathan the chance to take a quick look around. There's no cigarette in his dad's hand, no gum clenched in his jaw, but Nathan doesn't spot any new cracks nearby. Of course, if his suspicions are true, the cracks are more likely to appear wherever the chief's worries are directed. When he and Audrey go back out to the compound, he's sure he'll find the spiderweb design spattered through the ground or the walls of the house.

"Enough!" Garland shouts over Audrey. "Leave the Glendowers alone! Going there openly—worse, going there with a dead body discovered and a kid missing—you've already stirred up more trouble than you can handle. Now, if you really want to be useful, you'll go stop Driscoll from taking whatever mob he's scared up out to the Glendowers and starting a war Haven isn't prepared for."

"But—"

"Do you work for me or don't you?" The chief whirls on Nathan. "And you…don't go anywhere alone, son. You're already too much of a target—don't be stupid on top of it."

"What is he talking about?" Audrey asks before the chief is even out of hearing distance. "Duke and now him—what are they so afraid of? I'd think they'd be happy the town is finally seeing how much you do to help."

Grimacing, Nathan rubs a hand over the back of his neck. He'd hoped everything would die down enough so he never had to explain this, or at least that Duke would fill her in behind his back. (But why hope? Why, when he knows Haven so well?)

"The way the town ignores me?" he prompts.

"Yeah, I've noticed that," she says sardonically.

"Well, it used to be worse. My dad used to take me with him when he visited places, people, introduced me to everyone. Like he was preparing me to follow in his footsteps. He told me that just like him, I was supposed to be Haven's protector, supposed to defend it no matter what. That's what this is." He sticks out his arm and pulls back his sleeve to reveal the tattoo his dad had drawn for him on an old napkin.

"A sign that you're some kind of frontline defense for Haven?" Audrey's fingers dance over the tattoo, oblivious to his held breath that whooshes out of him when she pulls her hand back to her side without actually touching him.

"That's what he said, though I'm beginning to wonder." His voice drops low. "Max Hansen had one. But the chief doesn't."

"Well, Hansen himself admitted he'd work with anyone who'd give him what he wanted." Audrey moves so that she fills his frame of vision. "And he had a lot of tattoos."

It's not an answer, really, but it's reassurance enough for Nathan to continue.

"Anyway, Vince talked to my dad after I tested out of the police academy, and the chief stopped taking me places. Then my Trouble came back and he stopped talking to me. The look on his face when I came back from the doctor's…" Nathan shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge the memory (even though he knows it will do no good—he can never shake the image of his dad's utter disappointment). "I think my Trouble was one of the very first to come back, and I doubt anyone appreciated proof that they were returning."

"But you don't cause the Troubles." Audrey frowns. "In fact, you help them. You help _me_ , but you do more—I read all your articles, Nathan. I know you cover the markets where the Troubled are selling food, or you review the art a Troubled person paints. You write pieces showcasing their work for the town. You make everyone see them as people. Don't they realize that?"

Nathan shrugs. "It's not much, Parker. They probably see it as too little too late. Besides, Vince's words carry a lot of weight and he's never liked me much. Him or the Rev."

"But he gives you a job?"

"I think he's keeping an eye on me."

Audrey gives herself a little shake, as if brushing away any distractions from their original topic. For once, Nathan wishes she weren't quite so single-minded. "All right, so…what? Instead of ignoring you, they used to treat you worse?"

"Things settled down somewhat when Dave offered me the job. Besides, by then, other Troubles were showing up. Guess they realized getting rid of me wasn't going to stop the Troubles."

"But now you're there every time a new Trouble hurts someone. You're talking to witnesses and driving me to crime scenes. So the chief's right, I am putting you back in the public eye, and now they're remembering that they blamed you."

"Scapegoats are always popular," Nathan says with an attempt at a smile. "But it's fine, Parker. Like you said, we're helping the Troubled. That's what matters."

"Except that doesn't explain why Garland thinks you shouldn't be alone right now." Audrey's got on the face she wears when she's trying to solve a case, puzzled and intent and intermittently lit up with discovery or creased with the beginnings of a plan. Nathan's not sure he likes it being aimed at him. He doesn't want to be a case or something to be fixed. He wants to be her friend, her partner, her ally.

"Nathan?" Audrey asks, and he pulls his attention back to her.

"If the Rev's organizing a mob right now, the chief might be thinking he'll come after me. He's not my biggest fan."

"Yeah." Audrey's smile is mirthless, her mind a dozen steps ahead. "We've got to start getting you new friends."

"I like the one I have," he says sincerely, and is rewarded by her surprised blink and slow smile (it could be the light, but he thinks there's a flush on her cheeks).

"Okay, Nathan, I hate to say it, but Garland's right about this. I don't want to drag you in front of the Rev, so why don't you stay at the Herald until I get him talked down? Dave or Vince are there, right?"

"Should be," he says reluctantly. "It's almost time for mai tais."

"You have to admire their work ethic," she snarks before fixing her gaze on him. "Nathan, please. Just in case."

"Fine." He rolls his eyes, unable to concede gratefully. "I have a story due anyway."

"Okay. Be careful."

"But, Parker"—he catches hold of her elbow, warmth without any seeming source—"I'll see you tonight, right?"

"Right." She grins mischievously. "Partners in crime."

He has a bad feeling about the whole thing, but how can he do anything but smile back at her when she is so bright and open and inviting? "Partners," he agrees, pleased when her smile turns as soft as his.


	4. Chapter 4

Nathan's pretty sure it's unconscious (Audrey is many things, but self-aware is _not_ one of them), but ever since the other Audrey Parker came to town (or is it since she discovered she was Lucy Ripley, too? when she realized she was not who her memories made her think she was?), Nathan's watched Parker distance herself bit by bit from her law enforcement background. When she first came to town, she was unorthodox, sure, but she still adhered to the form of the law. Now, nothing is sacrosanct. Everything is an option so long as it saves lives and helps the Troubled.

It bothers Nathan, though he can't quite put his finger on why.

Still, he goes with her anyway because she _definitely_ needs someone watching her back now. It doesn't surprise him that she knows how to pick locks or that she faces the possibility of criminal charges with as much equanimity as a shotgun in her face or a kid breathing water more easily than air. In fact, the only thing that throws her at all is a picture of herself, only this time instead of a blonde or brunette, she's a redhead. She's still beautiful, of course, but Nathan is more concerned by the sadness in this new iteration's eyes…the sadness in Lucy's eyes in that Colorado Kid picture…the sadness beginning to rouse in Parker's gaze.

Once Audrey's pocketed the photo and Nathan's stopped trying to save a kid who doesn't need saving, once everyone's put their guns down (though Nathan hopes Audrey's hand is as close to hers as Cole's is to his), a few things start becoming clearer.

Why the Glendowers isolate themselves. Why Cole took Daniel. What the chief considers 'handling' a situation.

"You're Garland's boy," Cole says when he finally tears his eyes away from Parker. "He was here earlier today with quite a lot to say about keeping a low profile. But I have to protect my family, no matter what it takes."

If Audrey were to put her hand on his arm, Nathan's sure he'd feel goosebumps rising. He doesn't like Cole, or the fact that he has the same tattoo as Nathan, or the way he seems to have an answer for everything. He reminds Nathan of a snake, coiled and concealed but ready to strike and poison the instant your back is turned.

Finding out that Gwen Glendower is Penny Driscoll and that the Rev has a personal stake in this just makes everything worse. Audrey obviously feels bad for Gwen's situation, or at least understands it, but Nathan thinks of a man mourning his wife as dead while she lives unconcernedly with another man, another name, another life. He thinks of Hannah Driscoll crying at her mom's funeral and growing quieter and smaller over the years as she tried to both endure and love her father. With those thoughts in mind, Nathan does not have it in him to pity this woman, who had a choice whether to stay or go, who left a child behind (who makes him feel, even for an instant, any sympathy at all for the Rev).

The situation spirals out of control faster than Nathan can follow. Duke's involved somehow, Evi's there, running some kind of con, the Rev has a flock of armed men ready to go wherever he points, Cole is eager to spill blood, and there are too many secrets, so many that Nathan thinks they've all forgotten Leif and his body washed ashore with an old note clutched in his hand.

"I told you," the chief storms when they surround a barn where a mother made stupid by desperation holds a dozen children captive. "I told you to leave this alone, but you never listen to me, do you? You always have to do things your own way."

Audrey levels him a challenging stare. "Are you talking to Audrey Parker? Or Lucy Ripley?"

Nathan suppresses the urge to groan. They have no time for this right now and by the time they get back to it, the chief will have all his answers prepared and a dozen distractions ready.

But Garland surprises him by laughing. "Took you long enough," he says. "I thought you were going to explode if you held it back any longer."

Nathan looks down at the chief's hands, shaking as he clutches a cigarette, and has to bite back his own comment about repressed explosions.

But Audrey smiles mischievously and says, "Guess I was testing you on how long you'd keep things from me."

"Long as I needed to." The chief looks at Nathan, then takes a deep drag of his cigarette. Audrey just stands there, showing no surprise or curiosity, so Nathan assumes the rumbling is almost imperceptible, but he notices a wobble in his vision. As if the ground tremors ever so slightly.

Another crack?

"There's a lot going on here that I hoped you wouldn't ever have to know," Garland says seriously. "I should have known better, though. This isn't an easy place, and men like Driscoll just make it worse. He's getting ready for war, Audrey, and he'll use anything and everything necessary to win it."

"And Cole?" Nathan asks (he tells himself it's because he needs the information, but later, much later, after the dust is cleared and he's standing over a grave, he'll know it's really because he's jealous of Audrey's easiness with the chief; because he feels forgotten, unwanted and ignored).

Garland sucks deeper on smoke, and for a moment, Nathan doesn't think he'll answer. But then he scoffs and drops the cigarette, grinding it down with his heel. "Cole—and others like him—they're set in their ways. They won't take kindly to anyone who tries to make changes to the way things have always been done. Those people will tell you they have a purpose, but just remember, they only have one real goal and that's to survive. They'll hunker down and dig themselves in and fight if they have to, but they'll draw blood and fight wars for the chance to endure."

"Endure until what?" Audrey asks before Nathan can even open his mouth to demand his own answers.

( _Why?_ he wants to shout. _Why would you tell me this tattoo means something it if really doesn't? Why would you make me think I was meant for something greater when all this ink stands for is the desire to survive?_ )

Audrey doesn't get her answers either. The Rev arrives with a smug gleam in his eye, a twist of his mouth whenever he looks at the chief, and a calm refusal to get Mary to let the children go before they die. He has no solution, no cure, but still he would rather the kids die than live Troubled. Nathan feels rage surge within him, but he hangs back, tries not to draw attention his way and make things worse.

"I have an idea," Audrey murmurs to the chief, and before Nathan can tell her he thinks this will backfire horribly, she's calling Gwen and telling her to come down. To reveal herself to the Rev. To stir up his hopes or call up his fears or summon up his wrath, and whichever it ends up being, Nathan knows this will not turn out well.

The Rev's men mill in the background, Cole will be chafing to face down the Rev and protect the woman he calls wife, and time is running out for the Glendower children.

"Audrey," he hisses, "I don't think this is a good idea."

"If he realizes what his prejudice cost him, maybe he'll make a different choice now," she replies, and Nathan can't help but stare at her.

"You really believe that?"

She hesitates. "Not really, but I'm hoping this will work so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt."

It doesn't work.

When the Rev steps out of the barn with a gun held slackly in his hand, Nathan misses it entirely. In some way, he senses that the ground is trembling again (is it a waver in his vision? some sort of scent or pressure change that affects his ears? He doesn't know, just that he can tell there is something coming that's bigger than the cracks his dad's managed to semi-control). Distracted just when the Rev emerges, Nathan looks down, automatically searching for the spider-webbing pattern he's grown so familiar with—and that's when everything happens at once.

The Rev shouts what sounds like a denial, then gunshots go off and the police are diving for cover all around him. By the time Nathan looks up, everything is danger and chaos.

"I tried to help them!" the Rev shouts. "They took my wife from me and threatened children, but I offered them aid anyway—and you see them reject it! There is no good left in them!"

From the woods behind the barn, the Rev's mob comes pouring out in droves. Smoke clogs the air and the wind sags beneath the potent stench of gunpowder and sweat and fear (and blood).

"They are beyond redemption now! You see them turning against even the law!"

It's strange that for all the cacophony enveloping them, Nathan can still hear the Rev clear as day. What makes it worse is that he is not entirely wrong: the Glendowers _are_ the ones who fired first. Cole is there at Gwen's side like an old and weathered sentinel. A gargoyle crusted with age and barnacles, baked in rage and resentment—faced off against the stark, lean form of the Rev, who refuses to bow before the bullets or the threat inherent in Cole's stare, but gazes back unconcernedly while their pawns battle around them.

How are they both standing so solidly when the ground is shaking Nathan, the whole world rocking around him?

Then his hand floods with sensation. Audrey's grabbed him, tugging and directing, yelling his name, telling him to get down. It's only then that he realizes his dad was trying to get him to cover behind the Bronco's dubious protection, grabbing his arm and pulling so hard Nathan had thought the earth was threatening to topple him.

But the ground _is_ shaking. And he's not the only one who notices it anymore.

Beneath the cops trying to radio in for backup and calling questions about an earthquake, Garland hugs his arms tightly around his chest. "This is what I was afraid of," he growls. "I've been trying to keep it all together, but I knew, I _knew_ , this day was coming. Haven's like a pressure cooker and everyone in it is ready and willing to explode. Last time, Nathan…things changed last time."

There are multiple cracks crawling toward them, slicing through the soil and grass and whatever else gets in its way. Nathan shifts next to Audrey (ready to grab her and throw her in the Bronco if necessary) but doesn't take his eyes from those cracks. He's never seen more than one form in the same place before.

Incongruously, he finds himself wishing he had a pack of cigarettes to offer the chief.

"We've got to contain this situation!" Audrey says. "Remember that SWAT team I keep asking for? Now would be a really good time to tell me you'd considered it."

But Garland's staring at the cracks and doesn't seem to hear her. Audrey peers over the Bronco's hood, her gun held ready. Nathan leaves her to it. Right now, he thinks that maybe the chief is the bigger concern (and he wants to know, he _needs_ to know, what Garland is talking about).

"What do you mean?" he asks lowly. "'Last time'? Last time what?"

Garland hunches in on himself (it looks so strange, so _wrong_ , to see his dad small and bent over like a frightened child) but locks eyes with Nathan. And Nathan swallows, hard.

There is fear in his dad's eyes. Fear and desperation and (most chilling of all) tired resignation.

"I'm sorry, son. I wanted better for you—maybe I should have fought harder—but I thought this was how it had to go. You'll understand someday."

"Help me understand _now_ ," Nathan demands (or maybe he is begging, he doesn't know; there's a ringing in his ears).

But Garland isn't listening. He's staring down at his arm. Or rather, at Nathan's hand _on_ his arm.

Nathan's breath catches audibly in his throat. Both of them stare at the slight contact as if it is happening to other people, everything else fading into a background so distant it no longer matters.

Nathan doesn't reach out. He doesn't touch people. And he absolutely does not keep physical contact for any longer than necessary. (Of all people, Nathan doesn't touch his _dad,_ because his verbal rebuffs already hurt bad enough.)

Still small, still quivering in time with the tremors of the ground, Garland freezes. Nathan doesn't move. Around them, _under_ them, the ground stills. And gradually, suddenly (it doesn't matter and Nathan can't look away from his hand on his dad to figure out what speed the rest of the world is moving at), the air falls silent. The gunfire tapers off, the yelling eases, the smoke clears. All that's left, like the rise of a violin straining for the peak of the sky while the orchestra is left far behind, is the sobbing, keening cries of a woman.

Parker's the first to stand, her body tense but her face calculatedly open. As soon as she's upright (vulnerable and, as always, in so much danger), Nathan has to jump up too (has to position himself to take any bullet aimed her way), and his hand is ripped away from his dad's as if it was never there. The chief is right behind him, though, moving to flank Audrey.

Whether his reasons are good ones or not, Nathan didn't like Cole or Penny or the way any of the Glendowers have handled any part of this situation. But that does not in any way prepare him for the sight of Cole slumped among the grass with blood boiling sluggishly out of three holes in his solid chest, or Gwen huddled over him, keening and desolate.

"We just wanted to live!" she shrieks. "We didn't hurt anyone! This is Haven." Her voice quiets, hoarse, juddering. "This is Haven. We're supposed to be able to live."

The Glendowers array themselves seamlessly around her, grim and unflinching as a few of them lift the body of their fallen patriarch. He is not the only one stained with blood (physically or, Nathan's certain, metaphorically).

In the quiet, the Rev strides forward from among his own ranks. He's commanding, imperious, and Nathan wonders if he is completely oblivious to the sneer that belies the compassionate hand he holds out toward the woman who was once his wife.

"It's a new day, Penny," he proclaims. "But there's still a chance for you." He looks up to the audience of stunned cops and frigid Glendowers and Audrey (his eyes, of course, skip right over Nathan). "There's a chance for everyone who repents and comes to the right side. It's time to make Haven a haven again in the only way that will last."

Gwen rises to her feet. She is shaky and stained with tears, her dress covered in Cole's blood, but there is fire in her eyes and when she speaks, Nathan hears the echo of Cole threatening to drown the beaches in blood. "We're not evil, Edmund. We're just people. But you…you're a monster. And we will never give into you."

The Rev's eyes are cold as always and the loss of his sneer makes him seem, somehow, even more dangerous. "I'm sorry for you, then. But your family _will_ be leaving Haven, and there isn't a single thing you can do to stop them. So take the cursed children with you. Flee to the oceans. But I would think twice before coming back. Haven will no longer shelter the wicked."

"Hey!" Audrey calls out, stepping forward and moving to stand between the two parties (Nathan's surprised it's taken her so long). "Enough! Don't you both think that enough people have died today? Gwen, take the children. Get all the Glendowers back to the compound—if you come after the Rev, I won't protect you. And you," she turns to the Rev, "what you did going into that barn was brave, but what you did when you came out? These deaths are all on your hands."

"No," he says flatly. "They are on yours."

Audrey actually recoils. "What?"

"You think you're helping, but all you do is prolong their pain. Better to end things once and for all and wipe the Troubles from the earth."

"They're not the problem—they're people!" she hisses.

"They're damned." The Rev's thin lips stretch in a thin smile. It's not his usual sneer, colder and more sinister, as if he is no longer hiding beneath a polite veneer. "And none more so than the one that's made himself your shadow."

Audrey's already moving to place herself between the Rev and Nathan, already opening her mouth, but the chief is there. Suddenly. Abruptly. Standing as tall as he can, solid and immovable. There's a smirk on his lips and something almost carefree in his eyes.

"Careful what you say there, Driscoll. I don't think you're ready for open warfare just yet, and that's what you're going to get if you make one move toward my son."

"Your son is the reason the Troubles are still here," the Rev says. "And you know it."

The ground is shaking. Or Nathan is. Or maybe the entire world, all of Haven and the oceans and the lands far away that have never affected Nathan one way or the other. All of it trembling and coming apart at the seams. He can't move. He can't think. (He cannot, above all, look at Audrey.)

"I think you have that the wrong way around," Garland says, then he turns to look straight at Nathan. "You need to get out of here. I'm done holding things together. It's time to end this."

"End what?" Nathan asks. He's surprised to hear his own voice (surprised that it sounds steady and unaffected). He's surprised that he can take anything in besides the Rev's accusation, reverberating inside his head.

"Audrey, get everyone out of here."

"No," Nathan says because he understands now. He gets it. _I'm done holding things together_ , his dad said, and Nathan's seen the cracks. He put it all together, realized that his dad is Troubled and that no one knows. That whenever Garland Wuornos is worried about something, the earth itself tremors for him, stress and pressure emerging by proxy.

And the field around him is splitting apart at the seams, contracted with painful rumbles.

The Glendowers are ushering away their children. The Rev's men are watching as the cops take Mary into custody. The Rev himself observes Garland dispassionately.

(Nathan still cannot bring himself to look at Audrey.)

"You've kept this secret a long time, Garland," the Rev says, almost conversationally. "You were right never to have children."

"I have a son," Garland spits. The Rev's cold eyes move to Nathan, then to Audrey, then back to Nathan, and he forms that sinister smile again.

"Yes, you do," the Rev says (a threat) before he turns and walks away.

Around them, the field empties, and Nathan hates it. He wants to call everyone back. He wants to grab them and plant them in place and force the chief to look at them (because the chief would never hurt anyone; he would _have_ to hold it in if there were lives depending on him).

"I'm sorry, son," Garland says. "I didn't want it to end this way. But this is on you now. Maybe it always was. Don't listen to the Rev, but watch him. He's ready to end everything no matter what the cost and I don't think that's a good idea."

"Chief, you can't…you can control it." Nathan steps closer, heedless of the fractures riddling the ground beneath the dying grass. "You've controlled it this long. You can keep doing it."

Garland smiles at him. "No, I can't. It's all coming apart and the only thing I can do is make sure no one else goes down with me. Audrey, you need to get him back. Don't let him get caught up in this."

"No!" Nathan shakes his whole body in case she really has put a hand on him to draw him away. "No, I'm not going to let you do this."

"Not really a choice anymore."

There are cracks opening along the lines of his dad's face. Seams that glow and tear while his body shakes in a way impossible anywhere other than Haven. Nathan's being pulled back. He can't feel Audrey's hands (she must only be touching where there's clothing) but he can see his dad dwindling with distance.

"No! Audrey, let me go! Don't let him do this! Parker, talk to him!"

"There's nothing you could have done, Nathan. Just...look out for her. Take care of her."

"Dad!" Nathan screams (echo, reflection, faded shadow of Gwen's cries before him, and he remembers the Rev calling him Parker's shadow, remembers the shadow man who'd killed, all the darkest, scariest parts of a man peeled off and sent out into the world for bloody justice, and Nathan wants that for himself but he has no shadow, he has no recourse, has nothing but eyes that watch his dad fall to pieces and a nose that smells only dust where there should be sweat and brine and nicotine and ears that flinch away from the boom of rock pieces exploding everywhere).

"I love you, son," Garland says, and then it's done.

* * *

Dave and Vince come. Dave tries to hover over him, but Vince pulls him away (to collect the pieces that were once flesh). It's a crime scene and there should be cops milling everywhere. It's empty (of everyone, but particularly of the gruff man who took him in and loved him in his crusty old way and died right in front of him). Audrey sits next to him and talks (he can't hear her over the ringing in his ears and the ceaseless echo of his dad's last words).

He feels empty. (He always feels empty, but never like this. He does not think he will ever feel any other way again.)

* * *

Eventually, Nathan is able to stand to his feet. Audrey's right at his side, a step behind (his own shadow, but no, she's not dark or murderous, and vengeance isn't her style, so maybe he's just messing up his own shadow part, the role he should be playing).

Nathan can't help it. He picks up one of the pieces. It's heavy. It's cold. It's stone. There's nothing of his dad in it. Not the man who enveloped him in his arms to fill his remaining four senses. Not the man who shut him out and stopped talking to him. Not the man who was always disappointed but never gave up on loving him.

It's just rock.

But something's hanging from it. A chain, half-caught in a crevice. Nathan pulls it out (careless, heedless until he realizes he might break it and maybe it's important, maybe it's the last thing he will ever have of his dad). There's a ring dangling from the end of the chain, a gold ring with tiny white jewels (diamonds? he's no gem expert) centered on it. A man's ring. Maybe a wedding ring (except his dad's ring was a plain gold band).

Suddenly it hits him that he will never be able to ask the chief about it. This will be a mystery forever because the chief is gone. His dad is gone. No more words, no more laters, no more answers. Just an endless void sucking in all the what-ifs and draining away memories and giving back nothing but emptiness.

Nathan pockets the ring and locks his grief away.

* * *

"Nathan?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Audrey's hand reaching for him. He flinches. It's involuntary (he can't stand for her to touch him now, to make this moment _real_ ; he doesn't want her to touch him just because she feels sorry for him), just a small movement, but Audrey takes a whole step away from him.

There's a chasm opening up between them (not a real one, though, because the chief's gone and there won't be any more cracks, not ever).

Nathan wants to bridge it. But he can't. He's empty.

"Nathan," Audrey says again, her voice small. "I think we should get back to town. The Teagues have…everything. It's in the blue cooler. Do you want help…burying it?"

"No," he finally says. "No, I'll do it."

(She already sees him as Troubled. He does not want her to see him broken too.)

* * *

Duke comes.

It's strange. Nathan doesn't even know where Duke's been lately, though he always seems to be with Evi when Nathan does see him. How odd, that he thought not so long ago Duke was in the same boat as him, but he must not have been, not if he has left Audrey alone all this time, forsaken her warmth and smiles and sunshine hair for another woman.

Nathan waits. For the taunt. The jibe. The joke about both his dads dying right in front of him and how the world must be testing his numbness. Or maybe a warning couched in cruelty.

But Duke says nothing. Just brings his own shovel and begins digging right beside him.

A part of Nathan tenses, waiting (always waiting for the inevitable, for the other shoe to drop, like it has so many times before). But Duke only helps him.

It's strange.

Strange, but eventually, Nathan realizes he doesn't feel quite as empty as before.

* * *

"Nathan," Audrey says one morning as he drives her to the station. "Are we okay?"

He looks over at her, notices her clutching her coffee cup with both hands, as if she needs the warmth, and bumps up the heater. "Yeah. We're fine."

The view outside her window is suddenly fascinating. Her knuckles go white, her fingertips pink where they rest against the hot cup. "I'm sorry I couldn't save your dad."

What can he say to that? He never knows what to say, but this seems like an _important_ moment, one he needs to get right or everything between them will shatter into a thousand pieces. And he has no idea what she wants him to say. What she wants him to do. What _he_ wants to say or do.

(He wonders what his dad would have done. But that's stupid. He's not like the chief. He never has been and he doesn't think he could be even if he tried.)

"Parker," Nathan finally says (because he likes saying her name), "He knew you couldn't. You didn't give him false hope."

"But maybe if I'd—"

"No." Nathan clears his throat. "No, Audrey. You did what he asked you to." He pauses (but it doesn't feel like enough). "I'm sorry you didn't get your answers."

She flinches. "That's not…don't worry about it. He was your dad. That's much more important."

"I didn't even know him," Nathan volunteers. A quiet admission that finally puts into words everything that has been keeping him up night after night, staring up at his ceiling and trying to make sense of everything he knew about Garland Wuornos (which isn't, apparently, very much). "And now I never will."

"He loved you," Audrey says softly. "You know that, right?"

After a moment, Nathan tips his chin in agreement.

"Then everything else doesn't matter. Just remember that he loved you."

His chest doesn't feel quite so cavernous when he drops her off. (He doesn't flinch at all when she brushes her hot, hot fingertips over the back of his hand, light as a molten butterfly.)

* * *

He does not ask her about what the Rev said (accused him of, really, an accusation vast enough to topple everything left in Nathan's world).

Audrey never brings it up.

They both (the one who fixes Troubles and the one who maybe possibly might have caused them) pretend they have forgotten it.

(Neither has.)

They pretend they pay it no mind.

(Both do.)

* * *

"I think Cole killed Leif," Nathan tells her one morning while they're heading to Haven Joe's for lunch. Nathan likes their pancakes, and ever since Audrey befriended Nathan, Joe seems more than happy to serve him even at an outside table where anyone can see him.

"Yeah," Audrey says. She sounds tired, and Nathan knows that she isn't as eager to be dropped off at the station each morning. The official story Vince and Dave put out is that Garland was lost at sea, so the selectmen have been waiting for the required amount of time for search and rescue to be completed. Nathan wishes he had been able to find his dad's badge so he could give it to Audrey, let her know that _he_ at least has chosen his nomination.

"His own son," Nathan says. "He killed his own son so the secret of the Rev's wife wouldn't get out."

"He was desperate," Audrey says halfheartedly.

"Doesn't make it right."

"No," she agrees. "It was cold-blooded murder. He chose the woman he loved over his own son. That's cold."

"And she didn't seem to care," he adds. "I know Leif wasn't her flesh and blood, but shouldn't it have bothered her? Shouldn't she have tried to protect her son?"

"She didn't say a word about that. Though she did say that Lucy and Garland did work together, solving Troubles, helping people. I guess she didn't think her husband needed help for being a murderer, though."

"Strange, when she left the Rev because he wanted to get rid of the Troubled."

Audrey laughs (not her usual laugh, more ironic than happy, but Nathan drinks in the sound of it anyway, lets it fill him up and relieve the gaping chasm inside him). "Haven," she says. "You know, before I got to town—when I still thought I was just Audrey Parker, before the Troubles—I was used to criminals being…well, criminals. I expected to find people that I wouldn't want to be alone in a room with. But now, I just expect the 'culprits' to be scared, confused people who most of the time don't even know what they've caused."

"Isn't that better?"

Her shrug is slow and uncertain. "Maybe. I don't know. I think in a way it's a lot sadder."

"Except the Troubled have you," he points out. "Criminals can't always be helped, but you fix the Troubled."

Her silence is absolute. He doesn't think she's even breathing, knows she wasn't when she finally pulls in a sharp gasp as he parks in front of the restaurant.

"You still think that?" she asks quietly. She meets his eyes almost timidly, as if afraid of what she will see there. "Even after your dad?"

"You fix people," he says firmly. And then, because the moment is close and quiet and she is looking at him with wide, open eyes, he is brave. He looks at her and says, "You fixed me."

"Oh, Nathan." Her smile is big and genuine, all her tiredness washed away. "No one can fix you." (He tenses, wounded and ready to withdraw). Her eyes strip away the façade he's erected as armor, peer down past the numbness he's enveloped himself in, down to the core of him where he sits hunched in on himself, isolated and broken.

"There's nothing to fix," she says.

And fixes him all over again.

* * *

Audrey throws a Christmas party in July. It's…weird, but so was blinking to find himself in a toy store wearing clothes he doesn't remember putting on, looking up to find Audrey's face peering down at him from the washed-clean sky.

In small consolation, Duke seems just as confused as Nathan, though Evi seems determined to cheer him before the night is over. Duke looks like he needs the distraction after Audrey laughs her way through giving him and Nathan a shared present (one Nathan decides he will never mention again; there's a lot of things that need to stay in the past and sledding with Duke is near the top of the list).

Nathan finds a corner far away from the mistletoe to spend the evening and devotes himself to figuring out what kind of Trouble spurred all of this. He's confident Audrey's immunity protected her from whatever wiped his memory, so he plays a game with himself where he gets a sip of eggnog every time he comes up with a plausible Christmas Trouble (sadly, he comes up with enough that he resolves never to drink eggnog in July again).

After the caroling portion of the evening ends, Stan comes to say hello in his friendly but awkward way. Nathan actually manages to dredge up a smile for him. He's always liked Stan. Better, Stan has always seemed to like him, oblivious to the town's undercurrents ripping at Nathan. Best of all, Stan doesn't say a word about Garland, either in sympathy or reminiscence, and Nathan appreciates the respite.

Dave keeps trying to talk to him, but Vince keeps dragging him away. Ordinarily, Nathan actually likes Dave and endures Vince. Since his dad died, though, Nathan's been doing his best to avoid them both. Dave is overly sympathetic, Vince coldly curious, and Nathan just wants to be left alone.

Especially now. With a Christmas tree in the corner and Christmas music playing and the Christmas spirit unleashed around him, Nathan can't afford to think of his dad. He's just barely managed to get to where he can think of him all without being devoured by emptiness that swallows him whole. Thinking of him in the context of this? No. Nathan's not ready for that.

"You doing okay?" Audrey asks him at one point, leaning against the wall next to him.

"Just thinking," Nathan says. "Must have been quite the Trouble to bring all this on."

"Yes." Duke's there suddenly, one eye on Evi, who seems a bit more than tipsy and keeps stumbling into him, the other on Audrey. "I've been wondering the same thing. Particularly now that you've got me completely surrounded by cops."

"Christmas in July?" Evi says while the drink sloshes in her cup. "Whatever you're struggling with must be a doozy."

"Maybe I just wanted to remind myself that I have friends," Audrey says playfully, and slips away to stop Stan dipping his mug into the punch.

"Definitely not," Duke mutters before letting Evi pull him into an impromptu dance. Nathan quits his drinking game and sets his eggnog aside before he starts dancing too.

Eventually, the party wraps up. When everyone else trickles out (Duke leaves only after extracting a promise from Audrey that she _will_ explain the Santa suit), Nathan sets about collecting all the mugs left scattered over Audrey's things.

He's seen her apartment plenty of times before, usually from his place in the doorway while Audrey tugs on her shoes or finishes tying up her hair, but it's nice having a chance to really look around. To see what she surrounds herself with (Audrey Parker's chimes and Lucy Ripley's piano; knickknacks from Duke and mementos from Eleanor and paperwork from the chief; the hat and boots Nathan gave her when she first decided to stay hanging near the door). To smell her on everything in the room. To feel invited, included, and not just allowed because it's convenient.

"You don't have to do that," Audrey says when she's closed the door behind Duke and Evi and sees him cleaning.

Nathan smirks at her. "You're saying you'd tell me what happened without any incentive?"

"Cupcakes work better as bribes," she says with a laugh, slipping off her shoes (Nathan hurriedly looks away, the action striking him as strangely intimate).

"You only say that because you didn't see where Lucassi spilled eggnog."

"You're right. I'd rather not know."

They clean for a few moments in silence before she says, "I was always going to tell you, Nathan."

"I know," he replies. "I was always going to help clean up."

Turns out he hadn't guessed anywhere near the right Trouble, but then, it'd be hard to imagine Haven as a snowglobe and everyone in town vanishing one at a time if Audrey didn't look so serious as she relays what happened. Not for the first time Nathan thinks how hard it must be for her, to always _know_ when something's wrong but to be alone in that understanding. It sounds lonely. Terrifying. To have to trust herself more than what everyone around her believes, what all her senses tell her is true.

(But she is strong enough to do it unflinchingly, he knows that with complete certainty.)

"I'm sorry," he offers when the room is mostly clean again.

She blinks at him. "You couldn't help vanishing, Nathan. In fact, you were one of the very last to go. You told me that I couldn't get rid of you so easily, and then…then you just disappeared. I was all alone."

A shudder rolls through Nathan's soul at the mere thought of being stranded liked that, abandoned, alone amid the wreckage, bereft of everything he cares for. He's seized by the sudden urge to hug Parker, but luckily manages to stop himself when he remembers they're alone and she's hurting and he's weak and anyway, he's not sure exactly _why_ Chris Brody left town, but he's pretty sure the marine biologist plans on coming back to Audrey.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I wish I could have stayed for you."

She gives him an odd look, then, soft and gentle and exasperated and…fond? Touched? He can't quite pin it down. "I got you back," she says. "That's what matters."

When the moment stretches to the point of being uncomfortable, Nathan shifts. He thinks he should probably go. Everyone else is long gone and the last thing he wants to do is overstay his welcome.

"Thanks for telling me," he says with a shy nod.

"Of course." She seems surprised, but then smirks, one of those lightning-fast transitions he's come to expect from her. "I'll even let you off the hook for not getting me a Christmas present."

"In July," he deadpans, pointedly not thinking of the gift-wrapped box he found stowed in a drawer of his desk at the Herald. He hasn't quite worked up the nerve to open it yet, but he already knows it's for Audrey.

"Hey, you should always be prepared."

"Maybe I'll get you a gift card for coffee, then keep it with me for all those morning cups I bring you."

"Sure," she agrees without blinking. "Nothing says 'I care' like a gift card."

"I thought all the coffees and chauffeuring did that," he says, then freezes. He can't believe he said that. It sounded…it sounded like flirting. Like an admission that he does care. And of course, he does. As a sort-of partner. As a friend. There's nothing wrong with that. Those are both labels she's agreed with.

(But it meant more than that. He cares more than friends. More than just partners. _More_.)

Audrey squints up at him (Nathan's bones are made of lead; he knows because he cannot get any of his limbs to move), tilts her head (his brain has turned to mush; he knows because he cannot think of anything to say to make this moment innocent), then lets out a chuckle. "You Mainers and your grand gestures. All right, I guess that works then."

(Nathan breathes out a sigh of relief and doesn't allow himself to read any double-meanings in her words. He can give her the same favor she is giving him.)

"Well," he says quickly. "I'd better go. See you in the morning?"

"Yeah. With a cup of coffee." She smiles up at him as she holds the door open for him. "Good night, Nathan."

"Night, Parker."

He walks down the steps (already missing the scent of her), across the parking lot toward his Bronco, closing a hand over the jingle of keys in his pocket. The light fades behind him as he crosses into shadows, though out of habit, Nathan realizes he's watching the ground, searching for a familiar crack that will never appear again.

When he looks up, there are men emerging from the dark. One tall, lean form stands directly in his path.

"Nathan," Reverend Driscoll says. "I think it's time for us to talk."

* * *

A/N: All right, so I know I kind of tweaked a few of the episodes in the timeline - and I just guessed at 'Silent Night' - but hopefully that's a minor enough thing it doesn't make anyone upset. It just worked better to have the build up to the Rev/Glendower showdown without having 'Friend Or Faux' in between. Also, yeah, I've never liked the Glendowers - but for all that I didn't mind seeing them die, hopefully I kept it true enough to their characterizations. It's a lot of fun to imagine slightly different ways these things could go if the timing was just a bit different! Hope you all enjoy!


	5. Chapter 5

They take him to an empty shack in the woods, almost a mile away from the nearest house. It's not that Nathan wanted to go to the church, but this isolated location doesn't seem to bode well for him. Worse, he thinks it must be cold out—the Rev's men who manhandle him in and out of the truck before shoving him into the shack are all wearing jackets and hats. But it's July. It was hot enough Audrey didn't even remind him to bring a jacket just in case that morning. Besides, he decides, there are other threats far more pressing than the temperature.

"This has been coming a long time," the Rev says as calmly as if they stand on a main thoroughfare in downtown Haven (not that the Rev's ever talked to him so blatantly in public; at least, not until he accused him of bringing the Troubles back). "Your father was a fine man, Nathan, who did a lot of good for this town. It's a shame he ended the way he did."

"He was lost at sea," Nathan says. He's not even sure why (there's no way the Rev will accept the story the Teagues wove for Garland) except that he doesn't want to hear the Rev name the chief damned just for being Troubled (or maybe because he's afraid to hear the Rev say that it's Nathan's fault the chief is dead).

The Rev's lips twitch. "He died to save this town, which is a more fitting end than most people can hope for."

"Why are we here?" Nathan demands. "What do you want from me?"

He's counted at least six men besides himself and the Rev, though only two are in the shed with them. They haven't bound him yet, or at least, he doesn't think they have. Suddenly uncertain, Nathan lifts his hand to rub at the back of his neck, a motion that provides motion and color at the corner of his eye. Relieved that his hands are still free (that he is still alive and well enough to make the movement), Nathan turns his attention back to the Rev.

"If you don't know why we're here, then why did you choose to come with me?"

Nathan doesn't even blink. "You know why."

"Audrey Parker is a good cop," the Rev had said when he confronted Nathan outside the _Gull_ , "and I know she's able to take care of herself. But I'm not the only one who's noticed she grows somewhat reckless when she's trying to protect the helpless. So what do you say? Shall we have a quiet conversation somewhere a bit more private?"

Since then, Nathan's noticed that every one of the Rev's men is carrying a gun. He looks around at this hidden place with its dirt floor and solitary placing. It doesn't take a lot to recognize the signs of a powerplay. And if he's sure of anything, it's that Audrey needs to know the Rev is finally making his move—preferably before she gets caught up in it. Now of all times she must stay above the fray.

His dad's office is empty, after all, and someone needs to fill it.

Who better than Audrey Parker?

"Your father's passing left quite a power vacuum," the Rev says in eerie echo of Nathan's thoughts. "One Haven cannot afford. We can't have the outside world coming into Haven until we have a chance to purge the bad from the good."

"So you want to put in a puppet?" Nathan scoffs. "The chief never let anyone control him."

"There's a lot about your daddy you don't know, Nathan. Garland Wuornos walked a fine line between the Troubled and the righteous. But his goal was to make sure both sides stayed equal. Balanced."

"Let me guess—you want your side to be a lot more than equal."

"I want the Troubles to end."

The way he says it (as simply as if it is possible, achievable, at all within the realm of possibility) takes Nathan aback.

"People have suffered enough," the Rev says. "It's time for us to end this once and for all."

Nathan shakes his head. "Even if that were possible, what do you need me for? Neither side listens to me."

The men behind him shift loudly enough to make Nathan aware of it while the Rev smiles in hollow mimicry of amusement. "I don't need anyone to _listen_ to you. I just need you out of the way."

"We should kill him now," says the guy on Nathan's left. He sounds grim, even threatening, but after all these months of observing Audrey talk down the Troubled, Nathan can detect the anxiety he's covering. They're nervous. Unsure. Maybe even afraid, and Nathan can't help but think that that's a good sign.

"No," the Rev says. "No, everyone needs the chance to repent. And you, Nathan, you need it more than most, don't you? Not only do you walk alone, but now you walk through the blood of two fathers. Good thing I have a way to save you—you and the rest of Haven."

"I would never hurt Haven," Nathan says (vows), "and it's impossible to cure a Trouble."

(Except Audrey, he thinks. Audrey can reach them, touch them, help them, _fix_ them. Save them. Save _him_ , but he can't think of her, cannot bring the memories of her bright earnestness to this dank shack where the Rev will twist her and use her. He cannot let her come after him here, where he is helpless and she is outnumbered and there can only ever, in this town, be a bad outcome.)

"The good Lord provides tools," the Rev replies so casually. "Which is why you need to be removed. It doesn't bother me that you serve to distract Audrey Parker, but I can't have you getting in the way before the Lord's tool can accomplish his holy work."

Nathan squints in confusion. "Who are you talking about?"

"The tool I'm going to use to scour Haven clean of the Troubles. His family's always been here, and they've always worked for the righteous. Some of his relatives have had to be convinced, some do it willingly, and some…some require a bit of skillful manipulation. But don't worry—after all the history between you, I'm sure it won't take much to get him to kill you."

" _Kill_ me?"

Stupid, naïve even, but until this moment, Nathan hadn't been scared. The Rev postured and positioned and pontificated, but so far he'd been careful to make himself appear as the spotless leader, the willing martyr, the untouched judge. But killing Nathan? That was further than Nathan had expected this to escalate (but Audrey had known, hadn't she, with all her recent grimness and long hours).

"Oh, didn't I mention?" The Rev smiles his cold smile. "That's the only way to cure a Trouble, Nathan—to kill the one infected by it."

* * *

Later, Nathan doesn't remember much about the rest of the night. Snatches of time when all he can see is the tiny hints of mist expelled from his mouth, moments of alertness when he hears the Rev's men outside talking in muffled voices, too low for him to distinguish actual words. Instants of acute clarification when he realizes that no one will miss him. No one will come looking for him. Vince and Dave will assume he's with Audrey, but Parker wasn't planning on going into the station until the afternoon and she told him she'd drive herself. Which means it could be a day or more before anyone even begins to wonder where he is.

And that's good, he tells himself. With the Rev's words ringing so ominously in his mind, with his dad's warnings still echoing in his ears, Nathan knows that Parker shouldn't be risking herself for him. But…but he doesn't want to die, especially here, a helpless victim laid out like a sacrifice by the Rev.

It's almost dawn (he can smell the fading crispness in the air) when the gravel outside grinds beneath the weight of an approaching car. Nathan tries to shift on the dirt floor to see out a nearby crack in the wall, but the men standing over him shift menacingly, looming over him like all-too-willing executioners.

Going still and quiet, Nathan holds his breath in an attempt to better hear anything from outside.

It's definitely a woman emerging from the vehicle—and just as definitely not Audrey. Nathan ignores his conflicting relief and disappointment in favor of straining to hear more. Something. Anything. Preferably a piece of information that can help Parker back the Rev into a corner.

The Rev's sonorous voice makes some reply to the woman before barking a forceful order. Nathan tenses every muscle in his body when two more men burst into the shack to join his original guards.

This, _this_ he remembers vividly (in dreams that shoot him upright in bed, vomiting and shaking): the way they all avoid his eyes, ignore his questions, pretend he does not exist even as they surround him. The dirt and sweat and oil that stings his nostrils, overpowering his senses as easily as they overwhelm his violent struggling. The fogginess of his brain, a defense mechanism to protect him from the knowledge that he is going to die in mere seconds, minutes, the remainder of his life measured in such a finite span.

He's going to die. He's going to die and he won't be able to warn Audrey who this 'tool' is that the Rev is manipulating. He's going to die and the last thing he told Parker was just an ordinary (beautiful) good night. He'll never get to tell her… _anything_. All his chances are gone. His options are closed. His future is obliterated.

Nathan fights. He kicks and punches and yells (tastes blood in his mouth and sees it gleam crimson in the scant dawn), but it does no good at all (like everything he has ever tried to accomplish in his life, too little, too ineffectual, violent and savage and useless). One of the men reaches out with a meaty hand and covers Nathan's mouth with a cloth. The chemical smell is so strong, so overwhelmingly sweet and rotten at once, that Nathan gags and vomits. The dawn turns white (so white he's blinded), then goes black (so black he is enveloped).

* * *

Beneath the sharp smell suffocating him, beyond the darkness smothering him, Nathan gradually realizes he can hear voices. Every sweet-sour inhale threatens to knock him back into the void, so, taking shallow breaths, Nathan tries to focus past the blindness and nausea.

It's two voices, talking somewhere over his head—a man and a woman, both familiar, though in strikingly different ways (the Rev he cannot avoid remembering, the woman seems just outside his reach). Trying to anchor himself to their voices, he inadvertently breathes in too deeply and chokes on the chemical taste coating his tongue (chloroform? ether? he remembers Audrey tossing bottles in at an enraged doctor, shrugging and smiling at Nathan and so confident it mesmerized him so that he couldn't help but follow her). For a while, he swirls through nausea so thick it tangles up in his throat and casts fumes of bile through his mouth and nose until another whiff of sweetness knocks him back down.

He drifts on a sea of nothingness. Like always. Except…except that he's lost his other four senses, too, the scents and tastes and sights that help him pretend the tactile and concrete are real. No sound but muffled noises he cannot interpret. No scent but the overpowering smell turning vaguely into rottenness, beating him back down every time he tries to grasp for coherence. No sight but eternal darkness surrounding him until he's afraid to move (if he even still can).

Lost. Alone. Completely cut off (and this is what his darkest, most terrible nightmare is, isn't it? To wake up one day robbed of another sense, and another, another, until he is nothing. To be completely helpless, a body inhabited by a soul trapped within useless, confining flesh. A consciousness haunting the shell it can no longer affect. Long years stretching ahead of him that he will never recognize because he has no way to discern any changes, and no end in sight because he has no way to cease).

Voices rouse him from terror, so near they are almost legible. Nathan clings to the return of this one sure thing (as sure as anything can be in this limbo) and rides it up over the swells of chemicals and darkness, to a place where he still cannot see but at least he can hear.

"It's just this way," the woman's voice is saying, accompanied by a loud slam (a car door? Did she leave and come back? How long has he been like this?). "You wanted answers, didn't you?"

"How is a shack in the middle of nowhere supposed to explain anything?"

Nathan is so surprised at the sound of this voice ( _Duke_. _Here_. With the Rev) that he almost loses the thin thread of consciousness entirely. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, tighter, so tight that white starbursts explode in the sea of dark (a trick he used often as a young boy, before he finally admitted to the chief that he needed a nightlight). It doesn't help him figure out what's going on, but it keeps him awake, even if dazed.

A phone goes off and Duke says, "It's Audrey again. I should—"

"Do you want to go help Audrey with something the police should deal with or do you want to know why you're important, Duke?"

And now Nathan recognizes the voice, familiar but strange all at once—it's Evi. Evidence Ryan Crocker, leading her husband to stand over Nathan, who lies helpless and vulnerable and possibly already bleeding out for all he knows. A low simmer of rage burns in the back of Nathan's mind (because Duke has already seen Nathan at his worst, again and again, causing it and inflicting it or just witnessing and judging it, so many times that Nathan wishes anyone else here in the world besides Duke to see him trussed up and victimized).

"What are you even talking about?" Duke exclaims. "Evi, stop! Tell me what's going on!"

"I think I can explain it better. If you'll allow me…?"

The sweetly rotten smell lining Nathan's mouth and nose is fading. It doesn't matter. At the sound of the Rev's voice, Nathan reels. Because he remembers that the Rev wants him dead ( _That's the only way to cure a Trouble, Nathan—to kill the one infected by it_ ). He remembers that he said he had a person (a tool) who would be all too willing to get Nathan out of the way ( _Don't worry—after all the history between you, I'm sure it won't take much to get him to kill you_ ).

Duke. Duke is the weapon, the tool, the pawn in the Rev's twisted game. But how? Why? What would make the Rev think that Duke doling out murder like smuggled goods will end the Troubles? How many people think the same thing?

(And, ironically, this above all keeps him grounded, the stinging pain of knowing _he_ is accused of causing the Troubles while Duke is considered a solution to them, just like Audrey.)

The questions, though, don't matter. Not really. Because just like the Rev, Nathan knows: Duke will kill him. He'll probably be all too happy to pull the trigger on Nathan, to draw blood (as he's done before) and end his future (as he's helped accomplish before), once and for all (the final nail in the coffin he's been trying to build for Nathan since they were kids).

The conversation has moved on, whole pieces lost to Nathan's realization and growing dread. Duke sounds careful, wary, as guarded as when he thinks someone might actually have something on him (an event so rare that it takes Nathan a long moment to place it). The Rev is confident, poised, insanely sure of himself while leading a man to murder.

"My father never did anything good in his life," Duke says dismissively, but Nathan's sure the Rev can pick up on his underlying uncertainty as easily as Nathan does.

And this, here, is going to be how the Rev wins Duke to his side, and Nathan can't even really blame him—because he knows what it's like to have a father you hate. He knows how desperate you can become to find something good, something redeemable (something worthy of being inherited next to all the horrible, sickening traits), about that father (about yourself and all your darkest fears).

He hadn't understood before why Duke came back to Haven, leaving his lucrative business and apparently a wife to return to the town he talked about leaving his whole life. But his father… Of course. Of course it would be this that reeled him back, and this that the Rev will manipulate.

"The Crockers are heroes in this town," the Rev is saying. "For as long as Haven has existed, there has always been a Crocker there to save it as best he can."

"Save it from what?"

"From the Troubles, Duke. From the curse that is rotting this town from the inside out, festering like a cancer. It's your job—our legacy—to root out that curse. To burn the wickedness away and make this town a real haven again."

Duke snorts (a small sound that Nathan nonetheless hears clearly, making him think he is a lot closer to him than he originally thought, but why, then, do they still sound muffled?). "That's impossible. Nobody can take away the Troubles. Right?"

 _Parker can_ , Nathan thinks. She's immune, but more than that, she _sees_ them. Looks and finds what causes them and helps solve the emotion instigating it. She fixes them and she doesn't have to kill anyone to do it.

"Let me prove it to you," the Rev says. "If you're willing to take your rightful place in this town, you need to earn it—and you can do that by ending a Trouble once and for all. You just have to do one thing."

"What's that?"

"Kill Nathan Wuornos."

The world spins, vertigo so strong Nathan retches again, replacing the scent of chloroform with bile. Eventually, he realizes he's being moved, yanked up by his arms; he actually thinks, based on the rush of air in his ears, that he's hanging. Two men dragging him between them, maybe. Yes, he hears his feet skidding over leaves and undergrowth. He tries to straighten and stand on his own, but the abrupt change in position did him no favors. Everything is a dull roar around him, all except the sound of his own heart beating, thrumming clearly in his head. He swallows hard to keep from vomiting again, though this time more from fear—because he still can't see.

He's blind. Blind and helpless and how can he live this way?

But then, he forgot: he's not going to live.

"Nathan?" Duke sounds worried. He sounds afraid. He sounds like he won't choose to kill Nathan.

He always likes to pretend he is the good guy. All their lives, he's liked to pretend to care. So excited for Nathan that a girl liked him in junior high. So willing to empathize when he came back to town and realized everyone still hated Nathan. So friendly when Audrey's around. He talks a good game, always has, but Nathan has learned (by sheer repetition) that there is always, _always_ an ulterior (painful) motive behind it.

And that's when he finally truly realizes he's about to die. It's fitting (or at least ironic) that it will be at Duke's hand. For all that Nathan prefers to avoid melodrama, he's always suspected it would come down to this—him and Duke locked in struggle, fighting and pulling back and forth until one of them falls. And this is Haven, where curses rule and the innocent suffer, so Nathan isn't even surprised that it will be Duke who emerges the victor.

He just wishes this death weren't so _pointless_. He will go out—not as a protector or savior or even bodyguard—but as a victim. Just a pawn wiped off the board for being inconvenient.

Even in the dark, the world is spinning around him, poisoned fumes rising in the back of his throat. Voices swirl above him (did they push him onto his knees?) rising, falling, rampant emotions Nathan can't quite grab hold of (the story of his life). He thinks he hears Duke saying he won't kill him (lying, always lying) and Evi saying that he should listen, that Nathan is in his way, will pull him down (but Duke will survive, just like he always does, the consummate parasite). He flinches away from the whip-crack of the Rev's voice (promises and lures and a knife held at his side, barely hidden).

The spinning comes to a sudden disorienting halt at the sound of a gun exchanging hands. The hammer clicks. The bullet falls into the chamber.

Nathan waits. He thinks he should feel something besides regret at his wasted life but can summon up nothing. Until he lets himself think of Parker.

 _Parker_.

Her blue eyes flash in his memory, the warm sound of her laugh, and Nathan is flooded with emotion. With hope and fear and something deeper, stronger, so overwhelming that he cannot pin it down with a mere definition.

"Parker," he mumbles (because if he's going to die, he wants it to be with her name on his lips).

"Nathan!"

It's as if merely saying her name summoned her, and that's so improbable that Nathan's sure he's hallucinating. Imagining her come to save him, calling his name as if it matters (matters _more_ ) if he dies. As if she will do anything to save him.

And she will. Audrey always does anything to save the Troubled, all traces of self-preservation forgotten the instant she sees someone in need.

Cold terror does what nothing else could and sluices away the lingering effects of whatever chemical they drugged him with.

Nathan goes rigid so abruptly that the men holding him upright drop him. Rolling clumsily (from the angle, he thinks they've tied his hands behind his back), Nathan manages to dislodge the bag hanging over his head (a _bag_ , that's all, not blindness from a careless blow on the head, just fabric and chemicals).

The sun is high in the sky, shining down on the Rev's men arrayed behind his lean form, the black of his uniform offset by Evi's colorful outfit as he grabs her and pulls her in front of him, so easily transforming her from a pawn into a human shield. Duke, a gun held loosely in his hand, looks uneasily between his wife and Audrey.

And there she is, Audrey, emerging from behind the parked vehicles with her gun steadily aimed at the Rev while her eyes search Nathan as if to make sure he's okay (he hopes she is too busy assessing the scene to really take in the secrets he's sure his face reveals in that instant he first sees her, real and alive and here for _him_ ).

A mess waiting to happen, all of it, and he's stuck on the ground, helpless as an overturned turtle.

"Did you follow me?" Duke demands. The gun in his hand, Nathan notices, loosely waves somewhere in between Nathan and the Rev (his two disguises clashing in front of the opposing audiences).

Audrey stares at him incredulously. "No, Duke. I followed the Rev. Nathan was missing—in case you couldn't have figured that out!"

"I had this under control until you got here and started waving a gun around."

"When I got here, _you_ were pointing a gun at _Nathan_!" Audrey says coldly, so savagely that the men hauling Nathan back to his knees actually take a step backward.

"Well, Duke?" the Rev asks. "How are you feeling?"

"What?" Duke narrows his eyes when Evi lets out a soft squeak. The Rev has a knife at her throat, sharp menace aimed at Duke's soft underbelly. Even knowing that Duke wants to kill him (Duke's gun still aimed halfheartedly in his direction), Nathan feels bad for Duke. No one should have to be in this situation, their loved one held hostage so that their spilled blood leaks onto your own hands until the grief is more easily escaped than the guilt.

"Just let her go," Duke says. "Please. She doesn't know anything about this town. She's not a threat to you."

"No, but we're running out of time for you to come to this realization on your own." The Rev shakes his head, his hand steady as a stone cast by the self-righteous. "It's time to take some drastic action."

"Let her go now," Audrey demands. "Her and Nathan both."

Nathan tenses when the Rev turns his attention her way. "And who will make us? You've brought no backup, no reinforcements—does anyone even know where you are? Without Garland Wuornos or the Teagues brothers, you have no backing in this town."

"I'm not going to tell you again." As reckless as ever, Audrey steps forward, away from the dubious protection of Duke's vehicle. "Let them go or I will shoot you."

The Rev is contemptuous. "Yes, you will kill. You've done it before—you know about that, don't you, Duke, seeing as it's family history—but it's not what you come for. Here on your self-appointed quest to—"

Lunging forward unexpectedly, Duke grabs Evi's arm with one hand and uses the gun in his other to knock the knife away from her throat. The Rev keeps hold of the blade, but Evi is free, tucked up against Duke's side. He's not pointing the gun at Nathan anymore.

The Rev stares down the weapons trained on him, Audrey and Duke aligned once more (Duke's façade chosen and firmly in place). But for all his struggling, Nathan can't get free and the Rev's men still outnumber Audrey.

"Is he really worth all this?" The Rev steps to Nathan's side. Nathan keeps his eyes on the knife in his hand. "So blindly do you protect him—without even knowing the darkness hidden behind him. Just like all the Troubled, wolves in sheep's clothing, and you fall for the disguise every time no matter how many innocents are killed as collateral."

" _You're_ going to preach about collateral damage?" Audrey sneers. "You don't care how many people die in this war you fight."

"But I do. The people that die are sacrifices—necessary sacrifices. If you really care about Nathan, you'll let us finish what we came here to do. It's the only peace he'll get."

"Audrey, just go!" Nathan calls. His voice is still slurred and croaky, but at least it's audible. "Get out of here!"

There are six to eight men here, all of them carrying guns, and the six he can see are all aimed straight at Audrey. Best for her and Duke to retreat and wait for backup.

But he should have known better.

"Nathan, I'm going to get you out of this, okay?"

"I tried to avoid this, Duke." Nodding to something in the trees, the Rev steps closer to Nathan.

Duke frowns. "What are you talking—"

The crack of the gunshot is so loud that everyone except the Rev ducks. Nathan flinches and looks down for the bloodstain. He's sorry it had to be this way, right in front of Audrey, just as she's promised him she'll save him—she'll blame herself, think that she failed him, and he wishes there were some way he could let her know that even if he regrets that it had to be this way, he regrets nothing else, certainly not her, _never_ her, but gunshots don't leave time for confessions—

It's been too long. There's no flicker in his vision, no blood pouring out of his chest, no rents in his flesh, no rattling breaths to underscore Audrey screaming out his name.

But someone else falls. Someone else flinches and bleeds and topples.

"Evi!" Duke shouts. "Evi!"

It's Duke who falls to his knees, staggering beneath the burden of his wife's body, sinking under the silence of her heart ceasing to beat, drowning out her apology with another cry of her name.

Gunfire breaks the stillness of the woods. Nathan tries to keep his eyes on Audrey in case he can warn her of dangers she doesn't see, but the man holding his left arm (his other guard has fallen, he notices belatedly, a pile of limbs and blood and flannel) is crowding him up against the Rev, who blocks off the sight of Parker.

"I think this will do it," the Rev says. "But in that case, it isn't crucial that he be the one with your blood on his hands. Still, don't worry, Nathan. I will offer you what absolution is in my hands to give."

"I don't want anything from you," Nathan spits, then falls backward as his guard pistol-whips him across the face.

"Nathan!" Parker calls ( _still alive_! his blood sings in his ears).

"Someone has to end you before you lead this town to ruination." The knife in the Rev's hand gleams blindingly bright, all sharp edges and reflective surfaces as he lifts it up toward the sun and then down, down, down toward Nathan's heart. He tugs frantically at his hands, but for all he cannot feel them, the ropes are merciless. He's caught, trapped, a fly in a web.

"It's better this way," the Rev whispers in his ear. "You don't deserve to have your curse lifted."

The man holding Nathan up is gone, though Nathan doesn't know where. As if hypnotized, he cannot tear his eyes from the descending knife and the Rev's hand twisted in his shirt.

"Nathan!" Parker shouts from somewhere outside the nightmare filling his vision.

Then the knife stills. Wavers. Falls from stiff fingers to clatter against the ground. The Rev's mouth is stained with blood, as are the hands he clasps to his chest (Nathan's mind flashes, inescapably, to the _Gray Gull_ , to a quiet night and the form of his nightmares standing in front of him with blood pooling in his hands and bubbling against his lips, shock in his eyes and death stained on Nathan's soul).

When the black-coated figure finally topples, he crushes against Nathan, a weighted form he cannot feel except in the bile at the back of his throat and the lightheaded vertigo affecting him so that he wonders if the Rev's body damaged him somehow or if it's a lingering reaction to the club on his head.

Either way, the world spirals around him in a slowly unraveling scene of chaos. Duke is shouting and shooting, Audrey's just shooting, the Rev's men are yelling and retreating, Evi's body lies forlorn and abandoned a couple feet away from Nathan. Sprawled over him, the Rev's body is suffocating, coating Nathan in his blood until Nathan feels as if he will never escape him.

The Rev's body. He's dead. Really dead. The Rev (a feared and venerated leader in this town) is dead and Parker's the one who shot him (here without letting anyone know where she's gone or what was happening, so only her word will support her), and she did it to save Nathan Wuornos (the town outcast, the pariah, the embarrassing secret no one wants to acknowledge), and the chief is gone. This is bad, probably even worse than Nathan can fully realize right now as his mind fights panic and his body fights its ill use.

How is he going to protect Audrey from this? How can he guard her from everything that's set against her?

"Nathan! Nathan, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Sensation explodes in Nathan's hand, his wrist, his neck, as the Rev's body is pulled away and unceremoniously dumped to the side. Then Parker's there, staring down at him with wide blue eyes, her mouth downturned, her brow creased. Caring and frantic and determined all at once in an odd combination Nathan's come to know so well.

"Nathan, say something! Are you okay?"

"Parker," he manages, and nothing more because she touches his face.

Fingertips, soft and smooth, rounded but edged with the slickness of her nails. Trembling and tremulous as she traces his jaw, his brow, his cheek—pain roars to life so suddenly that Nathan's entire body jerks.

"Sorry!" Audrey yelps. "I'm sorry, Nathan, I forgot."

"Forgot what?" He's dazed, wishing she would bring her hand back to his face, wondering if she would care if _he_ brought her hand back to his face.

"Where he hit you…it's all bruised. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"They just chloroformed me," he says, trying to sit up (now that her touch isn't short-circuiting all his braincells). Audrey rushes to help him, then makes a small sound when she sees his bound hands.

"Really, Nathan?" She's disapproving, though he doesn't understand why until she frees his hands and he sees the bloody gouges where he strained with all his questionable might against the restraints.

"It's fine." Nathan shrugs. "I can't feel it."

"Nathan!" she snaps, and then suddenly, with no transition he can see, she's crying, a tear slipping free to trace the curve of her cheek and her arms flung around him and…and…her nose against his neck. Her breath against the underside of his jaw. Her fingers in his hair. Her scent surrounding and overwhelming the lingering sweetness.

Nathan shudders but wastes no time in putting his arms around her.

Warmth envelops him. Lilies and lilac and body heat and a tinge of salt from her tears. Perfect. Perfect and so indescribable that he freezes in an effort to engrain this moment perfectly into his memory, even the ache in his cheek where it rests against her skull and the burn of his wrists where they brush against her skin. She's real and in his arms and shaking slightly, and Nathan is inexperienced and out of practice and dazed by the overload of sensation, but he holds on and hopes it is what she needs (hopes he can give her a fraction of what she gives him).


	6. Chapter 6

He's still a bit woozy when Audrey's backup arrives. Feeling bereft when she leaves him to send the after the Rev's men, Nathan looks around for a distraction. It feels disrespectful, somehow, to be sitting here alive and well while Duke is standing over the coroner, who zips up a bodybag over his wife's staring eyes.

"I'm sorry," Nathan offers, but is taken aback by the sheer fury boiling in Duke's gaze. Duke stares at Nathan for a long moment before he looks away, releasing Nathan from the force of his raw emotions.

"She always did tend to get in over her head," he says (as if it could possibly _not_ matter to him that Evi's being loaded into the back of an ambulance that no longer needs to run its sirens). "But…she was trying to help me. I mean, the Rev was going to give me answers."

Nathan's eyebrows rise. "Are you serious? He was never going to tell you anything—and even if he did, he wanted you to kill for him. Is that what you want to be, Duke—a hired killer?"

"He had answers!" Duke yells, whirling on Nathan so fast that the world spins around his blurred vision. "He knew _everything_ and he could have told us what he knew! Don't you get it? We wouldn't be—"

"Yes, I understand," Nathan snaps, struggling to his feet (it was less than an hour ago that Duke stood over him with a loaded gun; he feels too exposed, too mortal, without being on his feet). "I understand better than you do if you seriously think he was ever going to do anything more than string you along like a puppet. He was a killer and he wanted to tear this town apart."

"He was a mark and I could have conned him." Duke bristles, steps toward Nathan with his hands out, like he wants to strangle him, his whole body quivering with tension. "Aren't you tired of being in the dark, Nathan? For _once,_ wouldn't you like to actually be ahead of the game instead of left twisting in the wind? Why should we always be scrabbling for answers when _he_ could have actually provided some!"

Refusing to back down, Nathan narrows his eyes (cannot summon up the strength needed to swallow down his own anger and betrayal—though he shouldn't feel betrayed, he _knows_ what Duke is). "Those answers were only going to come at the cost of my life, Duke. So what? You willing to kill me? You hate me that much?"

"Hey!" Audrey steps between them, so close Nathan wants to focus on her and let the rest of the world fade, but Duke hasn't looked away yet and Nathan will not be the first to relent (not when he's right and Duke is so very, very wrong).

"I guess we'll never know what could have happened," Duke finally says quietly. His gaze swings quickly, violently, to Audrey. Nathan immediately starts to step between them, but Audrey's hand on his chest prevents him from moving. "You _were_ aiming for his leg or something, right, Audrey? Because you wouldn't lose a chance to get answers—you wouldn't take that away from me when you know what it feels like to be in the dark about your own past. Right?"

"He was going to kill Nathan," she says, so coldly that Nathan is unsurprised to see her hand hovering over her holstered gun. "So no, I wasn't aiming for his leg. He was a murderer, and I stopped him before he could hurt anyone worse than he already has. I did what I had to do, and I'm not going to apologize for that."

Audrey steps forward, crowding Duke back. "And you, Duke? If you were the one with the shot…would _you_ have taken it?"

Nathan tenses (he's not sure, in that instant, if they're talking about shooting the Rev…or _him_ ).

Duke's stare slides over Audrey to Nathan (to his left arm where the tattoo hides under a torn jacket). "I don't know."

Audrey pauses, just for a split second, before she grates, "Well, you better figure that out."

And Nathan is too tired, too disoriented (too betrayed) to care when they turn and leave Duke standing in the clearing alone.

* * *

As soon as he's finished filling out his statement, Audrey pulls him into her office and shuts the door behind them. Sure that she wants to figure out a plan for countering the inevitable backlash from the Rev's followers, Nathan lets his eyes linger on the second desk tucked into the corner. It had only been for a few days, the period of time when he'd followed Audrey into the station every day and sat in her office, but she'd let him use the desk and computer and filled up his silences with chatter and fidgeting and _life_ in a way his desk at the _Herald_ didn't (not with Vince and Dave's conversations all dried up to silence or couched in cryptic code when he's in their presence). Only a few days, such a small period of time to occupy so much of his thoughts. Seeing the desk now only reminds him of how much he _wants_ (and how much he can't have, not now, not when Audrey is already enough of a target).

Instead of telling him how she plans on confronting the Rev's followers, Audrey retrieves a first-aid kit from a desk drawer, plants Nathan in a chair by her desk, and grabs his hands.

As a consolation prize, it isn't without its benefits.

Nathan goes instantly, totally still, afraid to even breathe lest it make Audrey stop touching him. He always wants to feel her (to feel _anything_ , but her in particular), but there's something even more potent about the sensation now. Most of his concentration is tied up in memorizing the moment in all its particulars, so it takes him a while to realize the reason for the heightened sensations. When it finally occurs to him, he feels like an idiot because _of course_ life and death situations produce adrenaline (but it has been so _long_ since he could feel the effects on his own body). It's obvious and completely logical…but he secretly thinks it's more than that.

Like the tickle of her hair against his chin as she leans in close over his wrists. Like the stutter to her breath when he lets his hands rest, palm-up, in her lap. Like the warmth of her presence and the gentleness with which she ghosts her fingers over his gouged wrists. Like the way she keeps a hand always on him but is so careful never to touch anywhere that would make him aware of pain.

 _More_.

"The…" Nathan clears his throat. He tries not to stare at Audrey, ordinarily, but with her gaze centered on cleaning his wounds, he feels safe in looking his fill. "The EMTs already looked me over. They said it'd be fine."

"Yeah, well, I don't exactly trust them!" she snaps. Her voice drops when she adds, "I don't trust anyone here."

He's caught by surprise when she unexpectedly glances up, her intent gaze crashing into him and setting off endless chain reactions. "From now on, Nathan," she says, "it's just you and me. You're the only one I can trust."

As elated as he is by this inclusion, he simultaneously revolts at the parallel _exclusion_. He doesn't blame her for it (mostly shares it, in fact), but it's _wrong_. Audrey does so much for this town, gives her all to help people, wants nothing more than to _belong_ —how can they all turn on her like this? Why don't they realize what a gift—a miracle—she is?

But he can't say all that (can't fix it for her and win support to her side and make allies for her), so he just gives her a slight nod (because no matter what, she will always have him, in whatever way she needs him).

Her expression eases enough that she almost manages a smile. "Good. I…I'm just going to bandage these."

"Where'd you learn to do this?" he asks, mostly just to hide the effect her dancing touches are having on him, but also because he wants to know. He wants to know everything about her, though even if he did, he has the feeling she would still surprise him all the time.

"Who knows." She rolls her eyes. "Audrey Parker took the required course at Quantico, but…well, I wouldn't know if I'd ever been a doctor or something, would I?"

"Well, I'm glad," he says, sidestepping her rhetorical questions. "Much better than any of the EMTs."

She laughs and flicks a finger against his palm (nowhere near where the gouges are), a light tickling sensation that makes the breath catch in his throat and fall back down to the pit of his stomach, heavy and startled.

It turns out that the simple task of Audrey winding bandages around his wrists is one of the most tantalizing experiences he's ever endured. The bandages mean that he can't feel much of Audrey…except every once in a while her fingertips brush against his skin, tiny sparks of sensation he can't predict so that they take him aback every time and chase shivers across the rest of his dead skin.

Nathan is so overwhelmed that he knows he needs a distraction just in case Audrey surprises him with another glance up (whatever his face is showing, he _knows_ it's too much).

"So…how did you find me?" he asks hoarsely. "I didn't expect anyone to even notice I was missing until tomorrow." When her hands pause and she looks up at him, he scrambles to fake nonchalance. "You were going to drive yourself to the station today, remember."

"Your Bronco was still parked at the _Gull_ ," she says. "But I would have noticed, Nathan. I would have known something was wrong when you didn't call tonight."

Oh. He does call her most nights, when she doesn't call him first, usually with the pretense of making plans for the next day (which they almost always discuss while he's driving her home) or asking her what drink she wants in the morning (black coffee, every time) or filling her in on something that happened that day (the same things he writes about and that she'll read about in the next issue of the _Herald_ ). For some reason he doesn't like to admit, he hadn't realized that they talked _every_ night, but when he thinks back on it, he realizes that it has been several weeks (maybe even a month or two) since they haven't called each other at the end of the day.

"Oh," he says. "They left the Bronco, though? That's sloppy of them."

"Yeah, unless they wanted me to come after you."

"Or Duke," Nathan points out. "They wanted him to kill me."

Audrey looks up from the secured bandages. "Like Max Hansen," she says, quietly, as if she thinks the name alone will hurt him.

"Yeah." Nathan swallows. "I'm starting to see a pattern."

"Me too." Audrey stands with the first-aid kit in hand (Nathan resists the urge to reach out and pull her back), filled to overflowing with restless energy. "Well, Duke isn't going to kill you."

Flashes of the hopeless regret he'd felt hearing that gun cock and knowing Duke was standing over him flood through Nathan's mind. "I don't know," he says. "He sure seemed close to it today. And he seemed to be willing to do pretty much anything to get some answers."

"His head's messed up," she agrees. "But he wouldn't kill you, Nathan. I don't have to know the particulars of your history to know that he cares a lot more about you than either of you will admit."

"Our history just means there's precedent," he says shortly.

"No. Evi's death affected him, but he would never kill anyone." Audrey nods decisively, as if just saying it has made it so. Nathan sees that nod and knows there's no use trying to convince her otherwise. She decided, almost from the moment she came to town, that Duke was trustworthy. That belief has inspired Duke to try to live up to it, to fit his disguise to the charade, and Nathan will admit that the smuggler's been more helpful than he ever would have guessed he'd be, but there's a limit. There always is, with Duke, and once that limit's reached, Duke will make whatever choice he thinks will benefit him most.

But Audrey won't see it. Just like she does with Nathan against the town (a comparison Nathan doesn't like but that rings true), she will stand by Duke and keep standing there even as the evidence mounts up against him. So Nathan will have to watch him for her, keep an eye on him and be ready to protect her when that inevitable moment of disappointment comes.

"Fine," Nathan says. "So what's your plan, Parker? When the Rev's people come after you, what are we going to do? There's not even an interim chief yet, no one to back you during the inquiry."

Audrey's jaw firms. "I don't care. I did what I had to do. The Rev was tearing this town apart."

"I know, but—"

"But nothing, Nathan. I did the right thing. I'd do it again. The inquiry will show that it was a proper kill."

In other words, Nathan realizes grimly, she doesn't have a plan. Well, he wasn't planning on sleeping tonight anyway. Sounds like he has some major brainstorming to do before Parker ends up the victim of a lynching mob.

"Nathan." Audrey steps up, close enough he has to look up to her. "You need a ride to your place?"

"How about a ride to the Bronco," he counters. "I have to do some work at the _Herald_ tonight."

She smirks at him, that mischievous smile he is so relieved to see after the day they've had. "Oh, I see. You throw off my whole day of work but still get to finish all your stuff."

She's teasing and smiling (she's trying, pretending, for _his_ sake), but Nathan knows her. He can tell how upset and strained and…sad…she is. Though she doesn't regret shooting the Rev, he knows her argument with Duke wore on her. And Nathan's disappearance. She would have been frantic. Panicked. Afraid she wouldn't be able to save him. And no matter how much she refuses to think about the upheaval the Rev's death will cause, she has to be worried about what will come.

So he lets his eyes twinkle as he pretends to frown down at his wrists. "Not everything, Parker. Doesn't look like I'll be well enough to do any decoupage for a while."

That does it. She's instantly amused, intrigued, and exultant to 'catch' him in something potentially embarrassing.

"You decoupage? Really? Where?"

"Someplace private," he says, as if upset she has found him out. Her eyes shine even brighter.

Her questions and gentle jibes follow him all the way out to her car—she even laughs outright at one point—and when Nathan catches his reflection in the window, he sees a smile gracing his own face.

* * *

News of the Rev's death hits the town hard. The story Dave and Vince write on Edmund Driscoll sells through four printings. At Nathan's request, they keep his name out of the story, referring to him anonymously (no need for him to attract any more attention than necessary). Audrey's inquiry comes and goes, and despite all of Nathan's reservations, she's acquitted of any wrongdoing. As he predicted, the Rev's followers aren't pleased at all, about anything—not the Rev's death (murder, they call it, in angry whispers), not Audrey's acquittal (they stand outside the building like protestors when she comes out, their silence eerily unsettling), and not the way the selectmen still haven't appointed a police chief (they know as well as Nathan does that they're all waiting for Parker to express interest in taking the position).

The mood of the town shifts. Rumbles and murmurs, like the earthquakes his dad tried so hard to control, building and stirring until Nathan is afraid the explosion will come at any moment. He begins finding excuses to stay with Audrey beyond chauffeuring her around. On the guise of interviewing some officers about the hunt for the Rev's accomplices, he slips into the station. He invites her to lunch every day without worrying how it may look, and just so happens to be researching a story wherever she's called out to go. It's not ideal, and Audrey has begun rolling her eyes whenever he opens his mouth, but she doesn't refuse him and so far, she's still alive (and that's a win that makes everything worthwhile).

But Audrey doesn't seem to care about the boiling tension. She throws herself into every case with abandon, reckless, intemperate, heedless of any law or rule until Nathan is about to tear his hair out from trying to hold her back or cover her tracks or even just get her to stop and _think_ for a minute. He can't lose her, not now, not like this—and for such a stupid reason, just her wanting to help the Troubled and basing her entire identity off that.

Doesn't she know she's worth more than that? Can't she see that her smile and her blunt teasing and the crease she gets in her brow when she's worried and the scent that follows her from room to room and the tone in her voice when she says his name…can't she see that all that is just as important and just as valuable as what she does for the Troubled?

Nathan tries, over and over again, to find a way to say all of that (without crossing any lines or scaring her away; without destroying his tiny, fragile dream of _more_ ), but the words won't come. She looks at him and tilts her head in invitation to whatever new brash move she has planned and the words get shoved back behind a lump of fear in his throat.

If he cannot say it in person (cannot summon up the necessary courage to say anything to her at all), he'll have to find some other way. A way that will maybe be easier on him and quiet the rumblings in town (he chooses not to acknowledge why he feels so responsible for calming the dangerous quakes; he doesn't want to know just how badly he longs to follow in his father's footsteps).

"I've been thinking about starting a new story," he begins one morning on the way to the station. He was up all night practicing how to say this (to make sure he actually gets the words out), and even though Audrey seems preoccupied, he can't let himself back down. This is _important_. "It'll be about what's been going on lately. Not everything, obviously, but the _truth_. As much as we can tell."

"Great," she says distractedly. "You think Dave and Vince will let you run it?"

"If I approach them the right way," he says slyly, hoping to coax a smile from her.

She sighs instead and says, abruptly, "Chris is coming back. Tomorrow. He's going to meet me at the station, before the parade."

"Oh." Nathan fixes his eyes straight ahead. For once, he's glad he can't feel. No need to endure the sinking in his gut or the squeeze in his heart or the clench of his throat. Without experiencing all of that, he can pretend he is impassive. Unaffected. Nothing more than a friend or partner (as he is, of course, why does he always let himself forget that?).

"Yeah." Audrey looks out the window with uncommon interest. "So…I guess I'll drive my car to the station in the morning. That way he and I can head to the parade from there."

He nods, like a puppet on malfunctioning strings. He wants her to ask him more about the story he never got to finish telling her about (all that rehearsal the night before gone to waste), but she doesn't. He wants her to tease him so they can laugh together, her openly and him behind the cover of a smirk, but she's quiet. He wants her to tell him again that she trusts him and that she's only seeing Chris to break things off, but that's just wishful thinking. Finally, he wants this whole morning to be over. Wishes they'd already reached the station so this uncomfortable silence can end.

Wishes above all (most fantastically of all) that he was not the only one of them feeling this way.

* * *

Despite all his best efforts to remain professional, Nathan finds himself stalling. He's supposed to be heading to the station. He's supposed to be meeting the new interim chief imported from out of town, trying to get a quote good enough for both the paper and Vince's healthy curiosity (or suspicion; with Vince it's kind of hard to tell the difference). He's supposed to be working and _not_ being jealous of Chris Brody, back to town with uncommonly bad timing and probably kissing Parker right about now. Kissing his _girlfriend_ , Nathan reminds himself, whom he hasn't seen in a long time, so the last thing Audrey would want is Nathan showing up and making things awkward.

If he _does_ make things awkward, which he's not entirely sure about. In fact, more than likely _he_ would be the only one feeling awkward. And uncomfortable. And wounded (which he knows better than anyone he doesn't have the right to feel).

So. Here he is stalling, pretending that his desk needs organized and that it's imperative these papers that have been sitting on his desk for three weeks now need filed. Really, the office has completely degenerated since Parker's arrival (since he's been pulled from his tidy, lonely world out into the bigger town of Haven, where people not only know him but have begun to interact with him occasionally).

Eventually, even Nathan can't take the tedium anymore. The Bronco seems unnaturally quiet, every creak and groan amplified, the seat large and empty. He loves his Bronco and has never felt uncomfortable in it (until now).

(He wonders if this is what Haven itself will be like for him now—a home in which he knows every street and cranny and beach but now grown slightly uncomfortable and awkward, the differences ruining all the familiarity he once clung to.)

The station looks as it always does. Nathan's eyes automatically check for Parker's car. When he spots it, he closes his eyes. So much for hoping that she and Brody left for the parade already.

Nathan takes a deep breath and gets out of the Bronco. He can do this. In fact, he might not even see Parker (she and Brody might be tucked away in some dark corner of the station, he makes himself realize). If all goes well, he'll be able to slip into the station, knock on the chief's (his dad's) office, get a quote in a few minutes (and a read of this man who's sitting where Audrey should be), and get out. If he does see Audrey, he can nod a greeting, avert his eyes from Brody, and make a quick exit. With Brody's Trouble, she won't even think there's anything odd about him, for all intents and purposes, fleeing (though the charm Trouble has nothing at all to do with Nathan's rearing cowardice).

Halfway up the steps, Nathan catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning to see what's barreling toward him, he's caught by surprise when he's yanked off his feet and thrown to the side, off the steps and rolling down the grassy hill onto the sidewalk. He throws his fists out, but is blinded by something large and massive resting on top of him (he wonders if his ribs are crushed or if he's breathing at all, the thing is so dense). Still, he catches a grunt that hopefully means he hit _something_ vulnerable. An instant later, something that smells of oil and electricity covers his mouth.

Instantly, Nathan is assaulted by flashbacks to the chloroform and the Rev, the sound of the gun and the knowledge of Duke standing over him, the feel of metaphorical knives in his back from Duke and Evi and everyone willing to watch him be murdered in cold blood.

Nathan's vision hazes and he goes wild, kicking and hitting and biting until he's able to get to his knees, panting loudly, blood assaulting his tastebuds, finally freed of whatever attacked him.

"Wait! Just calm down, will you? I'm trying to save your life!"

Struggling to his feet, Nathan looks down at the man crouched in front of him. Blonde and blue-eyed, scraggly-haired and twice as broad as Nathan, the man unfolds to his full height and looks down on Nathan by several inches. There's a bruise darkening his right cheekbone, but other than that, he looks well enough to throw Nathan over his shoulder and carry him off to an abandoned shed in the woods.

"Save my life?" Nathan repeats caustically. "You're the only thing that's endangering it."

"Tell that to the guys with guns inside the station," the man says, nodding past him. "It's been quarantined. Some kind of outbreak."

Terror strikes like a lightning bolt, so instantaneous that Nathan's running up the steps for the door before the giant can even take a breath. He's quick, though, for all his size, and he catches Nathan just before his hand can reach the door handle.

"My partner's in there!" Nathan snaps.

"You won't do her any good running in there and getting caught up in the quarantine!" the giant growls right back. "Now, let's get away from the door with its trigger-happy guards and find somewhere we can plan. All right?"

"Plan?" Nathan squints up at the man. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

The man turns and heads down the steps. He must be pulling Nathan with him, because Nathan finds himself stumbling after him. "Talk on the way," he says, dragging him to the Bronco and putting its metal flesh between them and the station.

"My name's Dwight," the man says. "I worked for your father."

"You worked for the chief? I've never seen you before."

"Actually, you have, remember?" Dwight turns to survey the station, his face in profile, and Nathan remembers seeing him conferring with the chief, slipping away when Nathan came to join them.

"Back when the mayor died," he says.

"Right. High profile case like that, there were a lot of eyes. Your father needed everything to look pristine in case outside interference came poking around Haven."

Nathan raises his brows. "You're a cleaner. You're telling me the chief employed a cleaner?"

"Lot of need for one around here." Dwight jerks his chin toward the corner opposite the station. "Looks like I'm not the only one who heard about the quarantine. This could get ugly fast. We're going to need reinforcements."

"We need a way to talk to Parker," Nathan says, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "She's inside. She'll know what's going on."

"Any Trouble that requires a quarantine isn't going to be pretty," Dwight observes (casually, as if Nathan always talks to strangers about the Troubles, in broad daylight no less).

"Troubles are Parker's specialty," he says wryly.

But Parker doesn't pick up her phone. Dwight pulls a radio from his own nondescript van, but Nathan can't even get a hold of Laverne.

"This interim chief must be by the book," Nathan finally says in exasperation. "He's cut off their lines of communication, probably taken their weapons."

Dwight frowns. "What do you know about this guy?"

"I know his name's Merrill and he's not from here." Nathan hesitates, then adds, "Vince and Dave don't like him. Or at least, the idea of him—they've never met him, but I get the feeling he wasn't their pick."

"Not a good idea to bring in outsiders." Dwight gives a short nod. "All right, I'm going to go round up some backup from the county office. You stay here and try to get through to your partner."

Nathan shifts his weight. "You know I'm not actually a cop, right? Parker…she's not officially my partner."

Dwight smiles, an expression that makes him look so much less dangerous. "I know," he says. "But from what I've been seeing, you should be in that building with her." When Nathan only stares at him (not sure at all what to say or how to react), he adds, "Something to think about," and turns to leave.

Over Dwight's shoulder, Nathan catches a familiar vehicle pulling up across the street. Sighing heavily, Nathan rolls his eyes. "Great, just what we need."

Dwight follows his line of sight and tenses at the sight of Duke crossing the street toward them. "You handle Crocker," he says, and is gone.

Duke arches his brows at the giant's exit but comes to a halt beside Nathan. "Friend of yours?" he asks. "I didn't think you had any friends besides Audrey."

"Says he knew the chief." Nathan tries to remain still, but even without feeling, every cell in his body is jittering with fear and impatience. In front of Dwight, he was able to hold it in just because he's still not sure _who_ the guy is or if he should be listening to him. But Duke…Duke does care about Audrey. He'll understand the terror limning Nathan's vision in silver sparks.

"What's with you?" Duke asks suddenly. "You're acting weirder than usual."

After only a slight pause, Nathan relents (Duke's probably here to see Audrey anyway, and after his quick stop to torment Nathan, he'll try to get into the station). "Place has been quarantined. I can't get a hold of Parker, and I don't know how many people are in there. Plus, there's a new chief from out of town."

"That's coincidental timing," Duke says slowly. "We sure _he's_ not the problem?"

"I assume he's the reason there's a quarantine," Nathan says with a shrug. He can't look at Duke anymore, or anything but the station. And the door that's so close. The door separating him from Audrey, who's probably in extreme danger right now and without any weapons. Or backup. "If Parker was in charge, she wouldn't lock up a potentially stressed Troubled person with a lot of innocents."

"Good point." Duke rubs his hands together. "All right, so what's the plan? How are we getting in there?"

"Dwight's gone to get the deputies," Nathan says, but once he hears his own reply, it feels like too little. Not nearly enough effort to save Audrey and everyone else. "They won't let anyone in, and there's people gathering behind us."

"People? What people?"

Sure enough, when Nathan looks to the corner where Dwight had pointed out the gathering crowd, there's nothing there.

"Huh. Guess they cleared out."

"Well, in Haven, I'm surprised crowds gather anywhere. You'd think as soon as anything happened, everyone would know enough to run."

"Audrey would run right to it," Nathan says, and he can't hide it anymore. How worried he is. How helpless he feels. How suffocating he finds his own inaction. He paces, uselessly, short tight lines by his Bronco, heedless of Duke's probing stare. He just has to move, has to change his perspective, has to expend some of his energy and trick his mind into thinking he's actually doing something besides just sitting and waiting (while Audrey's facing who knows what, going through who knows what, and she knows how to take care of herself, of course she does, she's so much more competent than him or anyone he's ever known, but she's not invincible, not invulnerable, and he's so, so scared for her).

"Nathan, calm down!" Duke's suddenly there, in his path, his hands raised as if to grab hold of him until Nathan throws up a warding arm between them, his body rigid. "Okay," Duke says in a placating tone. "I know you're having kind of a rough week of it, but you do need to calm down. You're going to pop a blood vessel or something."

Nathan scoffs low in his throat. As if Duke cares. As if he can understand at _all_ what Nathan's going through (but how could he, how can he, when Parker is Nathan's whole world but Duke can go sleep with the next woman he sees after Audrey cancels one dinner date with him).

"Look," Duke says slowly, "I didn't actually come to see Audrey. Those crazy guys you work for told me I'd find you here, and…well, there's something I needed to talk to you about."

"Now?" Nathan demands. "Parker's in danger, we're _useless_ out here, and you need to talk about something _now_?"

Duke glares at him. "Well, _you_ could use a distraction, and I need to get this off my chest! So, yeah, this seems like a good enough time."

Nathan stares longingly up at the station before he realizes that (much as he hates to admit it) Duke's right. If he has to stand here much longer, he's going to run for that front door no matter how bad an idea it is. "Fine," he says.

"Okay." Duke gives one sharp nod, then seems to stall. He gropes for words for a long moment, and when he finally speaks, all the irritation has drained from his voice, replaced by something that sounds an awful lot like guilt. "Look, Nathan, about Evi…I didn't know. I mean, she had to have told them where you were when they picked you up, but I never wanted…" He opens and closes his hand in front of him, like the right words are hanging there if he could just grasp them.

Nathan swallows (he's too vulnerable, too raw, he can't talk about this, now or ever). "You know they couldn't hurt me, right?" he says, hoping this is enough to forestall Duke.

Duke gives him a mirthless smile (one so familiar it instantly takes Nathan back to those first days after his Trouble came back). "Sure, Nate. You keep telling yourself that."

Stung, Nathan steps back, looks away, draws in on himself.

"Look, all I'm saying is…" Duke sighs. "I'm sorry, all right?"

He sounds sincere. Nathan wants to believe him (wants to soothe the ache of betrayal he shouldn't feel because he knows too well not to trust Duke), but then, he always wants to believe him. And every time he does, Duke disappoints him all over again.

"It's fine," he says dismissively, hoping the subject will drop. "I mean, you didn't have time to shoot me, so…it's fine."

"Nathan!" Duke actually grabs his arm to swing him back toward him. "I wouldn't have. I was never going to pull the trigger. I mean…" He drops Nathan's arm and summons up a grin, as if regretting his outburst already. "You're the one who's going to kill _me_. You're the one with that symbol on your arm."

"That's not what this symbol stands for," Nathan says stiffly. "It's not about killing you."

"He's right." Dwight materializes out of nowhere, his gaze fixed on the station as he settles himself at Nathan's side. "Couldn't get through. Someone's set up roadblocks, and apparently the sheriff's office was told that any calls about a quarantine in Haven were just a prank."

"Uh, excuse me?" Duke actually has his hand raised, like they're in school. "You know about that tattoo, Sasquatch?"

"I know enough," Dwight says, something grim in his eyes as he sizes up Duke. "It means a lot of different things to different people. But originally, it meant that the ones who wore it were protectors of the Troubled. The guardians of Haven."

At Duke's questioning glance, Nathan nods. "The chief told me the same thing."

And he had. Once. Even if he said something different right before he died, Nathan chooses to remember (to hold onto) the better meaning. The ideal his dad passed onto him, so great that Nathan got the tattoo to tie his own allegiance to that ideal, as well as to please his dad. He chooses to believe that he succeeded in that, even if Garland had only turned and walked silently away.

Because it _is_ a choice, Nathan knows: to remember only the bad and be willing to do anything to endure. Or to remember the good and rise to help and protect.

A choice to believe in what he _wants_ to be true (and what he can, then, help to _make_ true).

"We've got worse news," Dwight says, ignoring Duke's skeptical look. "Those guys who were just getting here before? They're surrounding the station." He points up at the rooftops of buildings across the street, where the streetlights reflect off metal weapons. "The Rev's followers aren't going to let your friend out of there. That interim chief must be one of them."

"You mean, the Rev's hand-picked puppet is locked inside a building with Audrey?" Duke asks.

Nathan tenses. "And she'll be focused on finding the Troubled person. She won't know to watch out for the Rev's men."

Suddenly, from inside the station, the sound of a gunshot cracks the dusk light.

Nathan throws himself forward, heedless of his own safety, ready to use his Trouble to ensure he makes it into the building regardless of the cost. But he's not moving. He's straining and pushing, but Dwight is solid and Duke is insistent and Nathan is useless.

"You can't go in there without a plan!" Duke hisses in his ear. "You want to put Audrey in even more danger?"

That gets through to him (mainly because Duke is still talking about her in the present tense; there's still hope).

"Well, then how do I get in? Is there an exit the snipers aren't covering?"

"Nope." Dwight starts pointing out doors and corresponding points where Nathan assumes homegrown snipers are hiding. "They're all covered, even the back ones that need a keycard to open. Nobody in or out."

"I have an idea," Duke says.

"What about a distraction?" Nathan sizes up Dwight yet again. "If you drew their attention, maybe I can slip through—"

"Can't do it," Dwight says in a clipped tone. "Guns and I don't mix."

"Guys," Duke tries to interject.

"Then _I'll_ draw their fire," Nathan says. "You can—"

"Fine!" Duke snaps, then he's up and running toward the station. His figure is silhouetted in the open, a clear and tempting target.

"No, Duke!" Nathan tries to grab hold of his sleeve, but Duke's already twisted away, slippery as ever.

"Hey!" Duke shouts up toward the rooftops. "Hey, it's me—your holy warrior or whatever! You're not going to shoot me, because then who would clean up this town, right? You need me."

"Your friend's crazy," Dwight observes.

"He's not my friend," Nathan growls, but he doesn't breathe until he realizes that Duke's right—the snipers aren't shooting. In fact, the one Nathan can see actually pulls his rifle up so as to avoid even aiming in Duke's direction.

No one and nothing stops Duke from climbing the steps to the station's door.

"Yeah," Duke says cockily, but he looks too relieved to completely pull off the confidence he's trying to project. "That's what I thought. Now, I'm going through this door and _no one's_ going to shoot me."

Nathan was so surprised (not worried or concerned, just…distracted) by Duke's idiotic, brilliant move that he doesn't realize he should be taking advantage of it before it's too late. His window of opportunity closes as Duke strides right through the front doors of the station. Belatedly, Nathan lunges forward, but Dwight hauls him back.

"They'll kill you, Nathan!" he grunts. "They need Crocker. They don't need you."

"But Parker does!" he snaps. "I have to help her."

"Duke's in there. He'll protect her."

"Will he?" Nathan blurts (as if this stranger he's not even sure he can trust has the secret to unlocking the enigma of Duke Crocker).

"We better hope so," is all Dwight says (and that's not a secret, because where Audrey's concerned, Nathan spends all his time _hoping_ , and where Duke is concerned, hope is only disappointed eventually), "because there's no way we're getting in that building."

Nathan can't take waiting for long, though, so he asks, "Exactly what did you do for the chief?"

"Whatever needed doing. Clean up, mostly."

"Right. But like what?"

"Well, the other day when the Rev's men fled into the woods, they stumbled over some bodies." Dwight shrugs, though Nathan notices that he rubs his hand over his leg as if it pains him. "Turns out there were three girls living out there. They were Troubled, cursed to crave human flesh. They stayed out there trying to avoid temptation, but it wasn't working out so well in the long run. So I moved them near a slaughterhouse, started talking up Grizzlies to everyone I met to explain the bodies, slipped the news to Dave and Vince so they could run a warning in the _Herald._ "

"You work with Dave and Vince, too?" Nathan tries to cover up his sense of betrayal (tries to hide just how much of a fool he feels, that all of this has been happening under his nose and he never knew, never even guessed). "How did I never know about you?"

"Vince and Dave keep things close." Dwight shrugs. "And I don't like the spotlight. Being out in the open in Haven means you get a lot of guns pointed at you."

"And you don't like guns," Nathan repeats blankly. It doesn't make a lot of sense. He can already tell Dwight isn't afraid of tense situations, and he clearly knows how to handle himself, so why the moratorium on firearms?

Shouts erupt inside the station, another gunshot, then silence.

"No more waiting!" Nathan demands, and Dwight nods.

"All right, let's go around back, though. There's less sniper coverage there and more places to barricade ourselves behind."

Nathan doesn't care what they do as long as it gets him inside the station and to Parker's side. He follows Dwight like an impatient shadow, and doesn't even ask how Dwight got the keycard he pulls out of his wallet. Dwight gives him a set of instructions (mostly involving not being an idiot and getting killed), and Nathan nods, nods, nods, whatever will get him in that building.

Then Dwight throws a smoke bomb all the way up toward the roof across from them (Nathan's glad he didn't know anything about Dwight when he first started throwing punches his way) and Nathan's running, every step pounding against asphalt, grass, concrete, the keycard fumbling for a moment in which he's worried he actually dropped it and is sliding nothing but air, but no, there it goes, a click and a green light and the door's open. Dwight slams into him from behind, sending both of them sprawling against the wall opposite them, and gunfire shatters like fireworks.

Flinching away from the bullets, Nathan waits for the door to click closed and the miniature thunderclaps to fade. Only when silence falls again does he lower his arms and pat himself down. It doesn't matter how many bullets there are, just so long as he can make it to Parker's side, make absolutely sure that she's okay, alive and well and happy.

There's no blood. No holes in his flesh. No blurriness to his vision.

He is, as impossible as it seems, _fine_.

When he finally looks up from his self-examination, he sees Dwight slumped to the floor across from him. "Not a scratch, huh?" Dwight asks, and smiles. There's blood lining a trail across his neck and holes in his shirt, five of them, all ringed around his heart. Even before he pulls his shirt open to reveal the bulletproof vest, Nathan knows he has to be wearing one. It's the only way he's still alive.

"Bullets tend to find me," Dwight explains.

"Huh," Nathan says (he doesn't mean to be judgy about Troubles, but this one seems even more useless than his own). "No wonder you didn't want to draw their fire."

"Kind of what ended up happening anyway," Dwight says, but he's smiling and Nathan realizes he's teasing. (It's strange, to be teased by someone who isn't Audrey; not mocking or derogatory, but companionable…even friendly.)

"Thank you," he offers, and Dwight nods.

"Well, now that we're in here, might as well see what we're up against, huh?"


	7. Chapter 7

What they're up against is a body on the floor of the restroom, black and oozing. A body in the main part of the station in the same condition. The new interim chief's body, also black and decomposing rather too quickly, in his dad's office.

Nathan looks from one body to the next, then glances up to the people huddled in the corner of the station, shaking and clinging to each other even though a couple officers are trying to tell them it's safe now.

He doesn't see Audrey.

"It's really gone," he hears Chris Brody say, making Nathan cautiously glance in his direction to see him in profile, staring down at his hands.

But still no Audrey.

"There's Duke," Dwight says from a step behind him. Nathan looks toward Parker's office, and there he is, standing in the doorway facing inward, talking away if his hand gestures are any indication. It's only his back that Nathan can see, but he thinks Duke looks…all right. Relieved, even. Certainly not upset at watching (or causing) Audrey's death.

(Even just the thought of that word, 'death,' paired with Parker's name makes Nathan freeze up.)

And then, Duke moves, just a bit to the side, and past him, over his shoulder, Nathan catches sight of a shock of blonde hair, gleaming gold and cream and honey under the station's lighting.

"Parker!" he exclaims before he can stop himself.

Duke turns sideways and Audrey meets Nathan's eyes.

She's tired and strained and keeps rubbing at the back of her head (as if she were clubbed there, hit in the back of the head because Nathan wasn't there to watch her back), but she's alive. Her blue eyes are gleaming with life and purpose and relentless determination. Her hands are steady as she swipes a lock of hair from her face and smiles at him. No visible wounds, no blood, no mortal injury.

The rest of the station melts away as Nathan yanks his arm forward (in case Dwight gets any ideas of holding him back yet again) and surges toward her. He thinks they might have recreated one of his favorite moments of all time (a hug in a dark station, an embrace so willing and eager and relieved that it was engrained in his memory, in his _soul_ , even before Audrey slid her hands up his neck and into his hair and he realized, in a thunderstruck instant, that he could feel her), but Duke is there between them, clasping a hand over Audrey's shoulder, and by the time Nathan comes to an awkward halt (not sure if he has the right to slip past Duke into Audrey's office), the moment a jubilant hug would be okay has passed them by.

He wonders if he's only imagining that Parker looks disappointed, too.

"Nathan," she says with a worn smile. "You're here too."

"Of course. I…we tried to get in, but…"

"Yeah, already let her know about the over-eager snipers," Duke chimes in. "Not a great statement on the way of things here, now is it?"

"Probably just about as bad as finding out Merill was one of the Rev's fanatics," Audrey agrees grimly. "He was all set to start rounding up the Troubled people and prosecute them like they're criminals."

"Be a long list," Nathan says dryly, but Audrey's smile is only a twitch of her lips.

Duke looks between them, seeming to find amusement in something (Nathan can't quite tell what). "All right, well, I guess I'll let you guys handle the cleanup. Not really my style, you know." He squeezes Audrey's shoulder (Nathan throws a quick glance over his shoulder toward Brody, but sees no sign of him). "I'm glad you're okay, Audrey."

"Thanks for the quick save," she says more warmly than she's managed for anything else in the conversation.

Nathan keeps his eyes averted.

"Nathan," Duke says somewhat formally, but leaves it at that, thankfully. Nathan's not sure he's in the proper mindset to handle anything more cutting.

Then it's just him and Audrey, him standing on the threshold he wishes he could treat as casually as Duke does and Audrey seeming to be lost in thought.

"Are you okay?" he finally asks, daring to inch farther into her office.

She meets his eyes. "Yeah, it was a bit close, but Duke came in just in time to provide the distraction I needed to get Jodi to turn her Trouble on her abusive ex." When he just squints at her, she waves her hand between them. "It got a bit complicated, and I won't say I wasn't occasionally worried"—for some reason, she glares out at something in the bullpen—"but we all made it. Mostly."

"No thanks to the new chief?"

"He didn't last long," she says, her eyes narrowed. "In fact, he made things a lot more difficult than they needed to be—which was understandable if he didn't know about the Troubles, but, Nathan, he talked about them right before he died. He knew all about them, and he believed the Rev was right to try to get rid of them all."

"Well, the Rev did think ahead, and he had a lot of allies."

"Right, but…this just proves how important it is that we get a new chief soon. One who's not a puppet and one who really knows about this town."

Nathan quirks his lips up. "You wouldn't mind changing offices, would you?"

She stares at him like she's not quite sure what he's getting at (and she has been through a lot, so he gives her a free pass on teasing this time).

"I think you'd fit the chief's desk just fine."

Her mouth actually drops open. "You…you think _I_ …" Slowly, she shakes her head. "I mean, you wouldn't mind if I took your father's place?"

"You're my first and only choice," he says honestly.

Though she smiles at him, it still doesn't reach her eyes. It evens out a bit when she takes a step closer to him. "That…that means a lot, Nathan, really, but…" Sighing, she rubs her forehead. "But I don't think I'm right for the job. I'm never here and paperwork gets away from me, and…and I'm an outsider. Haven needs one of their own to lead so I can be free to go out and do what needs doing."

It's strange, really, how let down he feels (worse, how _rejected_ , as if it's him rather than a job she turned down).

"Well," he finally says, "I'm sure Vince and Dave are doing what they can. They like to manipulate things from afar."

"Yeah, well, someone needs to." She slumps back against her desk, lifts an arm to rub at the back of her head again. Nathan has the sudden inexplicable urge to reach out and stroke her hair, soothe whatever ache is there, pull her into a hug and let her rest against him.

But he can't do any of it (Brody's still here and Duke already squeezed her shoulder and Nathan's only her friend; only her partner). So he sees, out of the corner of his eye, his arm come up and his hand move to his own neck, faded echo of what he really wants to do.

"If only I'd gotten here sooner," he mutters, furious with himself for stalling (it would have been easier to see her and Brody exchange a few kisses than to stand so uselessly outside while Parker faced all this danger alone). "I should have been here earlier, then you wouldn't have been alone when…" He trails off, knowing better than to continue (Parker chooses the oddest times to assert her independence).

Instead of looking offended, she is suddenly intrigued, thoughtful, her face transforming with the expression she wears every time she's unraveling a mystery. "That's right, you're usually here to pick me up. Everybody knows that. It was just a fluke that you weren't here today."

Nathan squints at her. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing." Her hair swings forward to obscure her face when she shakes her head, but he can tell she's edgy. Suddenly impatient to be moving. "Never mind. You know what, I'm…I'm pretty tired. I think I'm going to head home."

"All right." Nathan nods and moves to let her through the doorway first, but Audrey stops him with a gesture.

"No. You…you don't have to drive me."

Right. How could he have forgotten?

"Oh. Chris," he says, casual. Easy. (Not at all jealous.)

Her brow wrinkles. "No, Chris and I…we're through. And I wouldn't…you…even if…he wouldn't…" She takes a deep breath. "That's all done. Which is fine. Really. Probably long overdue."

He wishes he could do more than stand there and stare like a mute, but he has no idea what he should say. What does she need? Sympathy? Validation that she's doing the right thing? Offense on her behalf? (Some of those, he knows, will be far easier to provide than others.)

Fortunately, Audrey doesn't seem to expect anything, already moving past him to the next order of business.

"I'll drive my car home. Might as well get some use out of it every once in a while. Besides, I should probably talk to Chris, make sure he _knows_ we're through."

As she walks toward the door, she avoids his gaze. Her hands are fidgeting in her pockets. Without giving himself time to talk himself out of it, Nathan swings his shoulder into her path, not touching but definitely intercepting.

"Parker," he says quietly (offers).

"No, I'm…I'm fine," she says, holding up a hand between them.

"I know." He nods. "But if you weren't, it'd be okay."

Her smile is quick and surprised (as if it escaped, genuine and touched, without her permission) and her eyes are wide, thoughtful (as if she is realizing something but not for the first time). "Yeah," she says softly, before reclaiming her earlier drive, pulling it around her like armor. "I gotta go."

He doesn't turn to watch her walk away, content to stare at the empty desk and smile to himself (that she is okay, that she smiled at what little he could offer her; maybe even, just a bit, that she and Brody are through).

"Nathan…" At Parker's call, he does turn, to see her standing just outside her office, her car keys in hand. "I'll…I'll call you if I need a ride again, okay?"

He feels like a normal person would feel when they're punched in the gut. Shock and hurt and raw denial ooze up inside like internal injuries bleeding his life out with no visible sign.

After all this time, he never expected this from Audrey—the brush-off. The dismissal. The goodbye.

He's dreaded it, of course, but now he realizes that he never actually _believed_ it would come. It's like being tied up and drugged in the woods all over again, coming to the stark realization that he is going to be destroyed and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

Audrey looks, for an instant, like she is going to say something else (probably something more final, to make sure he, like Brody, knows that it's really over), but he doesn't wait for it.

"Right," he snorts. "See you around, Parker."

And he brushes past her before he does something he'll regret (like kiss her; or beg her to reconsider; or just stare motionlessly). He can't watch her walk away from him (as she's done so many times in his imagination but never for _real_ ), so he walks away first.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

* * *

Dwight's nowhere to be seen. Probably a good thing considering Nathan's mood; he doesn't need the reminder that he's always been kept out of the loop.

Nathan walks out of the station without a word to or from anyone. His Bronco is pristine, thankfully, and the snipers are nowhere to be seen, cleared out when they realized their plan to corral Audrey with a dangerous Trouble had come to nothing. (They should have known that Audrey could handle Troubles, should have realized that if they wanted to harm her, giving her a damaged person to talk to and connect with is not the way to go; he should know.) Frankly, even if they'd still been in position, Nathan wouldn't have cared.

For the first time in a long time, he slams the door closed with unusual force, loud enough to echo in his ears. Being careful is second nature to him, limiting his interaction with the things around him, keeping himself closed in so he doesn't risk injuries he won't feel to treat or rejection he's not emotionally capable of handling.

A fat lot of good it's done him. For all his care, all the walls he's layered up around himself, here he is. Alone. Hurting. Wounded. Damaged.

Dismissed and unwanted.

And he knows, he _knows_ , Parker so he thinks she's probably trying to protect him, distancing herself because she has the flawed idea that it's _her_ fault the Rev targeted him and the snipers came after her. It's not (he hopes) that she's realized he's not the greatest ally to have, or a good partner, or a friend she doesn't want. Just that she wants him to be safe and cannot comprehend that she is the best thing to ever happen to him.

She's trying to save him. He tells himself this over and over again.

It doesn't make the hurt any less.

And nothing's changed from earlier in the day, he recognizes at last, when he has pounded his steering wheel with raw hands and banged his head back against the blanketed seat. He's still locked outside, helpless, useless, unable to reach past the obstacles between them to help Parker.

But she's still in danger. Just because the snipers left before the cops were released from quarantine doesn't mean they won't try again. She still needs someone to watch her back. The day's events have at least convinced him that Duke is willing to protect her, and obviously she's much more willing to let Duke close (Nathan doesn't allow himself to dwell on that, though it's all he thinks about that night when he's trying to sleep), but Duke's still mad about the Rev, still willing to cross lines to get his answers, still yearns to know about his father.

So Nathan can't trust him, not fully. (Not ever again.) And Audrey is no longer willing to let Nathan be the partner at her side.

Which means that he will have to win her allies another way—the only way open to him.

Through the _Haven Herald_.

* * *

Once Nathan explains that his proposed series of articles will (if all goes as planned) help Audrey, Dave and Vince agree to run them. Surprisingly enough, it's Vince who agrees first, and who seems to be the bigger proponent of the articles. But then, he's always seemed somewhat protective of Audrey. It makes Nathan wonder how well _he_ knew Lucy Ripley (until he shudders and decides he doesn't want to know).

It doesn't take long for Nathan to think the stories are working. When he goes to the café for coffee, or heads to Joe's for pancakes, or stops at Benji's for some ice cream (and a chat with the only person in town who talks to him anymore, even if it is only between his naps), Nathan's noticed that people have started greeting him by name. A few even smile. One day, everyone he makes an appointment with actually shows up, which seems like pretty solid proof that the articles are having an effect.

Even Duke seems to understand, granting Nathan a nod and a conspiratorial grin on the third day and the third article. (Nathan does his best to ignore the fact that Duke's obvious approval makes him much more confident in his own plan.)

It's nice, having free reign at the paper and _good mornings_ when he walks the streets, but more importantly, he hopes it means that Audrey's being treated better too. Maybe even well enough that she's been offered his dad's position (because maybe she said she didn't want it, but she _is_ the best one for the job). He asked Dave about it, knowing the brothers are on the committee, but all he'd say was that nothing had been decided yet.

He wishes he knew for sure if the articles were working (beyond making his job just a bit easier). He wishes he knew if Audrey was noticing the difference.

It's not like he can just ask her. In fact, out of everyone he knows and interacts with, she is the only one whose opinion he doesn't know. She drives herself everywhere now, and seems to be busy whenever their paths cross going to and from crime scenes. And she hasn't called. Not for a ride or a coffee or at night when she's home. Nathan's even tried calling her a few times, but gave up when he kept being sent straight to voicemail. The closest thing he's come to a conversation with her is just a nod in passing, across the crime scene tape.

Vince watches him like a hawk, ready (eager, really) to swoop down the instant he thinks Nathan objects to the change. But really, what can Nathan possibly do? Every day he writes another of the articles, shines light on what and _how much_ Parker's done for this town (even without once using the word 'Troubles,' the point comes across loud and clear). Every day, he's reminded all over again of just how important she is, how necessary, how _crucial_ she is to the whole town.

And he's not.

It's not like he didn't know this was coming either. Since the moment they met, he waited for this, dreaded it, _hoped_ it wouldn't ever come, was warned by everyone who knows him that it was inevitable. And maybe he did start thinking she _wouldn't_ move past him. Maybe it took so long to actually happen that he forgot to be expecting it every day. Maybe he actually believed her when she told him they were friends and partners.

But now he knows: they're not.

Because she thinks she's protecting him from the danger she runs toward and she thinks she's saving him from harm. But a friend would know this abandonment hurts in a way no physical wound ever can. And a partner would trust him to be able to take care of himself.

 _It's just you and me_ , she told him, but she didn't mean it. _Together_ , she promised, but she's forgotten, too busy laughing with Duke (who's _important_ and vital, too, apparently).

Well, unfortunately for her, Nathan did mean it and he _hasn't_ forgotten.

"Your partner's gone a bit off the deep end," Dwight says, and Nathan startles for two reasons. First because he thought he was walking alone and it's uncanny how so much mass can appear and disappear so soundlessly. Second because Dwight says 'your partner' completely unironically.

Which…is nice. Really nice.

Dwight gives Nathan a small nod before going back to scanning the street, his gaze restless. It's a relatively quiet morning, only a few people in sight (but Nathan remembers the way Dwight was able to spot those concealed snipers so easily, and he doesn't distract him from his survey).

When it's apparent that Dwight isn't going to say anything else, Nathan shifts his shoulders in a minimal shrug. "I thought Parker was investigating that runner's death."

"Oh, she is." Dwight's intensity drives Nathan to a halt. "But she's not exactly doing it by the book, even for Haven."

Nathan smirks. "Audrey's always been a firm believer in winging it."

"Yeah? Is she also a firm believer in police brutality? How about harassment? Because that's what she's about to get charged with."

For all that he knows Audrey's been getting desperate to help as quickly and relentlessly as possible (as if she feels some sort of deadline he doesn't know about approaching), this takes Nathan aback. Brutality? Harassment? She can seem ruthless while trying to provoke a suspect into revealing a Trouble, but Parker's the opposite of cruel. He's never known anyone with more compassion, so willing to offer empathy and kindness, so utterly selfless.

"Look." For the first time, Dwight almost looks uncomfortable. "Audrey Parker does a lot of good for the people in Haven—I'm glad that you're helping people realize just how much. Any other situation, I'd let Audrey do what needs done. But…"

"But?" Nathan prompts when the pause stretches.

Dwight looks right at him. "But Vince asked me if I'd be willing to become chief of police. I told him I would. But if I'm going to take the job, if I'm going to take an oath to perform it well, then I won't be able to ignore that Audrey's harassing a lawyer."

"Chief," Nathan says, stunned. "I thought…I thought Parker would…"

"I'm sorry." Dwight shifts his weight but doesn't look away. "She wouldn't even consider it. And truthfully, I'm not sure she's really suited for it. Especially right now."

"I'll talk to her," he says shortly (conveniently forgetting that he hasn't been able to get a hold of her for over a week). "Just give me a little time."

"Nathan." When Nathan turns, already headed away, Dwight gives him a regretful look. "I know it was you're dad's job, and I'm not—"

"No, better that someone from Haven have it."

He mostly means that, too, something telling him that he can trust this stranger who went with him into a hail of bullets even knowing where they'd all end up. But a large part of why he says anything at all is because he wants to get out of there and process this in private. "I'm sure you'll do a good job, Dwight."

It's not Dwight's fault that Nathan feels robbed, as if the last bit of his dad has been yanked away from him without any warning at all.

Only when he catches sight of his reflection in a storefront does Nathan realize that he's got a hand clenched over the ring hanging from a chain around his neck. The last mystery Garland Wuornos left for him (the one he will never get an answer for).

Slowly, he pulls his hand down and focuses on keeping it at his side until he reaches the Herald. There, he focuses on something much more important, and he dials Audrey's number.

She doesn't answer of course. Truthfully, if she did, he would forget what he's supposed to be talking to her about and just be happy to hear her voice. As it is, he's relieved to leave a voicemail, his composure (and his dignity) still intact.

"Parker," he says into the phone. "I don't know if you've heard, but they've decided on a new chief, and he's been hearing some talk about your tactics. You know sometimes when we're interviewing witnesses and I have to tell you that you're coming on a bit strong? Well, you're coming on a bit strong, and it could get you in trouble. Permanent trouble. Just…you don't have to do this all yourself. Call me," he adds at the last moment (it slips out, words for once not jumbling in his mind or getting lodged in his throat but flying free and quick).

After a moment of pained embarrassment, he decides that he's glad he said it. He wants her to know that she's not alone (that she has an alternative besides Duke).

But she doesn't call him.

Instead, she does something much more direct.

* * *

Audrey strides into the Haven Herald holding a stack of newspapers. Nathan was just getting up with his own stack of papers to file, but the surprise of seeing Parker headed right to him, separated only by the counter between, has him frozen in place. And smiling, he's pretty sure.

"What are these?" she demands.

"Parker," he says (because he hasn't been able to say it in almost a week now). And he can't help it. His smile grows. "Hi."

She looks somewhat abashed and actually gives him a slight smile. "Hi," she says, before shaking herself and repeating, "What are these?"

"Newspapers," he says, tapping his own stack against the counter to even their edges before heading to the file cabinet. "You may not know this, but most towns have their own as a way of keeping the citizens informed. It's a neat invention that started way back in—"

"Nathan!" she snaps. "You know what I mean. You've been writing a series about me, about the Troubles—"

"Yes. I told you I was going to start it, remember?"

Her eyes slide shut as she visibly recalls. "Right. You did. But, Nathan, this is drawing attention to you. Duke says that people are bringing you up, and not always—"

"Duke," Nathan interrupts (trying to hide the way his hackles rise). "You're listening to him. I thought you said I was the only one you trusted."

"That's…that's not what this is about. He's worried about you."

" _Duke's_ worried about me?" He watches her closely, probably holding his breath though her pause doesn't last long enough for lights to begin to dance at the corner of his eyes.

"Yeah. This isn't like you, Nathan. I thought you wanted to blend in, or fit in at least, not have everyone looking at you and saying your name. This is garnering a lot of attention, and it's dangerous, especially with all the tension right now."

"I thought I was your partner," he says softly.

She visibly catches her breath. "You…you are. But you can't afford to—"

"Right." He lets out the merest expulsion of breath in the shape of a chuckle. "When you need a ride."

"Nathan, you need to focus, okay? These articles come dangerously close to talking about the Troubles, and both sides of the divide are upset, all right? This is a mistake."

Nathan scoffs and turns away (to hide the hurt). "Well, you can tell _Duke_ that I'm fine. I know what I'm doing."

"No, Nathan—"

She's grabbed his wrist. Both of them stare down at her hand, now hovering a hair's breadth above his skin. She did it to pull him back to her, to get his attention; she did it because she's used to doing this sort of thing with everyone else. But touches between them are never casual, never simple…never meaningless. So Nathan pulls his hand away from hers (gently, so gently; he cannot let his skin brush against hers because then he will be completely derailed).

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"Trust me," he says softly. "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you? Because it looks like you're trying to draw attention to yourself—on _purpose_. It looks like you _want_ people coming after you."

"If you think I'm slanting it," he says shortly, "or that I'm presenting you in the wrong light, I'm sure you can press charges for libel."

"No." She looks down, playing with the edge of the top newspaper. "No, you made me…you made me look like…"

"Like a hero," he says earnestly. "Like you help people."

"Which is great, but," she draws herself up, never able to let something go once she's got it in her teeth, "it's a mistake. You shouldn't be making yourself a target like this."

"This isn't about _me_ , Parker!" he snaps. "This is about _you_."

She physically draws back, staring at him. "What?"

"Like it or not, the Rev was very well respected and had a devoted following. When you killed him, you made a lot of enemies—"

"So what?" She glares at him. "You think I shouldn't have done it? You think I should have just let him go ahead and _kill_ you—"

"I didn't say that. I'm saying that killing him has consequences and you don't seem to be addressing them—or even admitting that they're there. So," he gives the suggestion of a shrug, "I am."

He thinks he's done it, convinced her that he has a plan and knows what he's doing, but then she narrows her eyes and squares her shoulders, dropping the papers on the counter as she rounds it to stand directly in his path.

"You don't have to protect me, Nathan, especially when it means riling up the populace—the Troubled are going around recruiting now, making lists, which means they're making enemies too. I'm fine, and I don't need these articles to help me do my job."

He has the sudden insane desire to shake her, his frustration spiking and turning his voice choppy. "You can't help people if you're in a jail cell, Parker, or if you've been lynched by some mob. You—you go off on your own and you never call for backup, you're breaking laws and going rogue—you're out of control. And I know that finding out you aren't who you thought you were threw you so you're, I don't know, rebelling against who she was, but—"

"So what?" She steels herself, something in her eyes slamming shut. "You're saying I'm not Audrey Parker?"

"I know who you are, Parker," he growls, "but sometimes I don't think _you_ do. And that's what this is"—he grabs up the articles and spreads them out in front of her—"it's proof. All right? It's tangible evidence that you're here. You make a difference. No one can dispute it when it's all right here complete with pictures and quotes from the people who actually care about _you_ , Parker. You matter. And Haven needs you. The Troubled need you. _I_ need you." He gulps, draws back a bit. "You…you make _me_ —"

She's staring at him, eyes so wide and blue, mouth fallen open, staring as if she's never seen him before. And Nathan cannot risk it, not when he's already lost so much of their relationship.

"Never mind," he says with a shake of his head, dropping the papers back to the desk. "I just…I just wanted you to see that—"

He always forgets how small she is, even though he's always looking down to meet her eyes. He always forgets what warmth really feels like, what cold feels like. He always forgets just how good it feels to be touched by someone and to touch them in return. So when she throws herself at him and pulls him into a hug, he is blindsided by all of these things. By the way she has to stretch up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around him and the way she folds so easily into the breadth of his chest. By the way she warms him simply by _being_ and the coolness of a tear as it slips from her cheek to his. By the enveloping _feeling_ of caring, of being cared for, crashing over him so that he has to hold onto her to keep himself upright.

"You made me real," she whispers, a shuddery breath past his ear that makes his whole body tremble.

"You are real, Parker," he murmurs back, wishing he could take the words (the truth) and layer it under her skin, slip it through her veins, tuck it deep inside her heart so that she will never doubt it again.

When she drops back down to her heels, her arms falling away, Nathan lets her go without a change in his expression. But inside, hidden behind his mask, he's desperately cataloguing every sensation and moment, every word and breath and tear she shared with him, hoping that _this time_ he will not forget.

"Thank you, Nathan." Audrey shakes her head, suddenly unable to look at him. "And I'm sorry. About this last week. I…I never meant—"

"Hey." He ducks his head until she has to look at him. "I'm still here."

Her sigh of relief comes on the wings of a smile, righting his world. "Yeah. And I'm not leaving. We…we _are_ partners, Nathan, and not just because you're a great chauffeur."

"Just for the coffee, then?" He smirks.

"Exactly." She grins and laughs and reaches out to squeeze his hand, once, quickly, as if she cannot quite help herself (soothing the ache of that careless touch to his wrist). There's a moment, then, long and drawn out, when it seems that they are on the edge of something. Teetering between one moment and the next, as if they have slipped into a transitional limbo.

But then Nathan drops his eyes and sticks his hands in his pockets (afraid of making her leave again). "So…there was really someone recruiting Troubled people?"

"Yeah. A man was trying to drum up a support group for them. Unfortunately, someone got his hands on the list and tried to frame him for killing them. Which, he kind of was, or at least his sweat was."

She goes on, but Nathan only listens with half an ear. Most of his attention is devoted to watching her. Breathing her in. Realizing all over again that she is _here_ , with him, and that the strain in her face he's seen this past week is gone (as if being separated from _him_ is what made her so tired and sad).

"You want to fill me in on the rest over pancakes?" he blurts out.

Smiling, she nods. "Yeah, I could go for some pancakes."

They're walking out the door and down the ramp leading to the sidewalk when Nathan's phone buzzes. He pulls it out to look down at the text message while Audrey comments on how she hasn't had a good cup of coffee in a while.

Once he reads the message, Nathan is torn. If he tells her now, she will leave—and he doesn't blame her for it. It's important and this is what she's been searching for since she first decided to stay in town. She wouldn't know, though, if he waited, put off telling her until after their pancakes were eaten and he had an hour or two more of smiles and soft looks to tide him over for the rest of his life.

But he can't. She trusts him because he has never hidden anything from her, and if he withholds this information, then how is he any better than everyone else who's kept her in the dark?

So he tries to look supportive and pleased as he hands her a piece of paper torn from his notepad, Lucy Ripley's address scrawled across it.

Hands her the means of leaving him so much more permanently (and taking his heart with her).

"Whose address is this?" she asks, looking down at the paper with a curious tilt to her head.

"If I'm right, it's Lucy Ripley's," he tells her (his throat is tight, he can hear the tension in his strained voice, so he makes extra sure to keep a small smile on his lips; he cannot hold her back).

Audrey's eyes whip to his. They're wide and affected and wondering. "How did you get this?" she breathes.

"I've been putting together everything we learned about her, the people in the picture, some who remembered her, I hired a PI out of Portland. She definitely didn't want to be found, but—"

Her hand latches over his, hot and tight and shaking (or is _he_ the one trembling?). "Thank you," she says, so breathy and meaningful that he almost pulls her into a hug. Almost leans down and gives into temptation in a way he can never take back. Instead, using what boldness he can scrape together, he weaves his fingers through hers.

"If you leave now, you can get there before dark," he offers, shrugging at the force of her stare (it's not uncomfortable, but it makes him feel unusually shy, almost bashful).

"This is…it's so close."

He gives her another smile. "I hope you get your answers. I hope you come back and tell _me_ what they are."

"Of course." She finally breaks the spell on him by looking down to the paper, worrying it between her fingers (her other hand still holds tight to his). Her voice actually stutters a bit, the words she's so good at coming up with seeming to skip ahead of her, just out of reach. "You know no matter what she says or wh-what happens, I'm-I'm coming back."

He can't speak. Can't reply. Can't do anything to shatter this moment. To remind her (or Haven, or the world) that he's happy with her. That this promise means everything to him. In fact, it's too good to be true, so amazing that he's afraid to hope for it, to believe in it, in case it gets snatched away from him. But she watches him, as if waiting, expecting a reply. What can he possibly say that will not scare her away (that will not reveal that this is his heart, raw and vulnerable and so exposed, he is offering her)?

"I promise," she insists, and Nathan's hand spasms in hers.

Because he believes her.

She's coming back to him. Even now, with answers held in her hand and a mystery a couple hours away, she holds his hand and promises him she will not leave him behind.

"You're my best friend, Nathan," she tells him (confides in him, secrets spilled between the two of them). "You're my partner. I won't leave you again."

All he can do (it's not nearly enough, far too little for what she's giving him) is give a short nod. Is watch her with wide eyes and a smile on his lips. Is let go of her hand so that she's free to go (he's reminded of that old adage about loving something and letting it go and seeing if it loves you enough to come back, and he's suddenly afraid all over again).

"I'll be here," he promises her in return (all he has to give her, his own presence, and anyone else would disdain it, but Audrey has always taken his presence as a gift, as something to be desired). "Partners. Friends. I'm here."

"Yeah." She stares down (at the address, or maybe at their hands, separate and hanging empty). Then she's gone, brushing past him, down the ramp, to the sidewalk, headed for her car. Nathan stands at the foot of the ramp and watches her go. (He feels like he is always watching her go.) His hand tingles with the ghost of her touch, a gift all its own but not nearly as much of one as the promise of her return.

As he watches, Audrey comes to a halt. She stands there, motionless in front of her car, before suddenly, she turns and rushes toward him. He doesn't even have time to come up with a theory as to what she's doing before she's standing right in front of him, so close that he could so easily pull her into an embrace. She stretches up, up (she's so small, it always surprises him when he realizes it anew), her hands coming to rest on his shoulders to balance herself, and then…

And then.

 _Everything_.

* * *

And then.

Her lips brushing against his cheek. A kiss, placed so confidently, so delicately, on his skin. Awakening nerve endings, spreading warmth, reminding him of those rose petals against his skin when he was given the sense of touch back so it could be ripped away from him again.

Her scent of lilies and lilacs surrounding him, enveloping him so that there's no way he can feel alone. Her hair tickling his neck and chin. Her eyes so close he can see tiny flecks of silver highlighting the blue.

Her weight leaning against him, on him, solid and _real_ , something concrete breaking up that sea of nothingness he floats so lost and alone within. She's here, she's real, she's kissing his cheek.

Kissing him. A small brush of her lips but so tantalizing, so euphoric, he actually sways toward her. And her lips move with him, sliding down until they reach the corner of his mouth. Like a sideways, clumsy kiss that nonetheless stops his heart.

His hands are hanging uselessly in the air, his muscles all tensed up as every bit of his attention is turned to the spot on his cheek where her lips brushed, to his shoulders where her hands press against him.

For just an instant, he is real. He is whole. He is not alone.

But what makes it best of all, what makes this moment the best in his entire life, is that it is _Audrey_ who is here, leaning upward to kiss his cheek.

Just when he attains the presence of mind necessary to lift his hands, to start to pull her into another hug like they one they shared in the Herald, she's gone.

Slipped away and headed for the next mystery.

Nathan stares after her, but for the first time, he's not dreading the worst. He has the memory of this kiss and the promise of her return, and he is not afraid.

Friends. Partners. _Everything._


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone reading and reviewing, favoriting and following! It's so great to know that there are other people out there who enjoy this show as much as I do. Hopefully, all my little tweaks are seen as a way of delving further into the world rather than messing it up! Also, I really struggled on the Duke and Nathan backstory, so here's hoping that it doesn't come across as anything but believable!

* * *

It only figures that when everything is going right in his world for once, that's when it all gets turned upside down.

The first report of a dead man being sighted—or really, a dead man causing a murder—seems like just another day in Haven (though he won't deny that his first thought was the fervent hope that Max Hansen was not about to rise from the grave with a smile stretched over his cold face). The next report follows directly on the heels of the first, so even though he's tired and groggy, Nathan gets up and heads into the office.

He stayed up almost all night waiting for Audrey before he finally headed to bed (before admitting that she wasn't coming, maybe wasn't ever coming back at all). He'd slept restlessly (nightmares visited him, worse than ghosts, dreams of Audrey coming face to face with Lucy Ripley and being _erased_ , Audrey Parker gone forever and a blank slate left behind in her place, her blue eyes burning with mute reproach that Nathan ever thought he could help instead of just stand helplessly by). The first call from Vince about Arlo hadn't woken him (by then, he'd been awake for nearly an hour), just distracted him from his brooding worry.

He's just parked across from the Herald when he sees Audrey getting out of her own car (parked haphazardly across two spaces, as usual, which makes him shake his head in amusement). She's headed into the Herald, and Nathan knows even without looking in the reflection on his window that he's smiling. Excitement surges in him, hazing his thoughts, lining them in gold and sky-blue.

She's come to see him. She must have gotten back to town late and didn't want to disturb him (unaware that she is _never_ a disturbance), but here she is, bright and early (and Parker _hates_ early mornings), coming to fill him in on what she learned. Coming to reassure him that she is keeping her promise (to prove she's come back to him).

Nathan's halfway out of his truck when Duke catches up with Audrey, cupping his hand over her elbow, leaning in close to her. They're across the street and speaking in quiet tones, but Nathan's hearing is better than good, and he picks up enough words to freeze him statue-still.

"You left the boat too fast for me to tell you," Duke says, intent and open, more unguarded than Nathan's ever seen him before. Parker's wary, not quite meeting his eyes, almost distracted, but she clasps his hand briefly.

"I know," she says, "but we'll talk about this later. I need to ask Vince and Dave a couple questions."

Vince and Dave. That's who she's here to see. Not Nathan (because he's not important, not vital, not necessary).

Nathan swallows and reverses his movements back into the Bronco.

Well, now he knows. It's better to know, so he doesn't waste time and effort on imagining or hoping for anything…well, anything _more_. She told him they were friends and partners, and he believes her (it's his own fault he thought the list was incomplete; that he didn't let himself realize there isn't another definition there to be added).

So. Audrey and Duke. Duke and Audrey.

He'll get used to it. He'll be able to nod and listen to their flirting and leave them alone at the _Gull_. Maybe, one day, he'll even be happy for them.

Maybe.

(As much a maybe as the possibility of this turning out differently and more in his favor.)

But not today.

Nathan starts the Bronco and drives. He has no destination in mind, nowhere to go that will escape what he saw, but as long as he gets _away,_ he doesn't care.

In a while, he will be a friend and a partner. But for now, for just a while, he needs time to be a man (with hopes he barely admitted to ground into dust).

He needs time to mourn.

* * *

With the revelation outside the Herald, Nathan forgot all about the appearing ghosts. When Vince's call recalls him to his job, Nathan compiles a hasty list on the ghosts and heads to the house of the grave-digger, the only common link between the walking dead.

Kyle Hopkins isn't home, but his pregnant wife is. She's standoffish and in a hurry to be elsewhere (but then, most people are when he ambushes them for an interview), so after a few questions, Nathan lets her go. He thinks about following her, but aside from that one commonality, it's not like he has any proof that Hopkins is connected to the ghosts. Instead, he heads to the cemetery, in case he can catch Hopkins there.

He doesn't see Hopkins, but he does see his dad (not Max Hansen, a monster revisiting him in more than his nightmares. His _dad_ ). Garland Wuornos, stout and solid and so immovable (despite his transient state) he never quite blended into the nothingness of that measureless sea that is Nathan's world.

For a long moment, Nathan just watches the chief, who's examining a gravestone as if it's important even though Nathan can tell he's just trying to get his bearings. Truthfully, Nathan thinks he might be better off just turning and walking away. Safer by far to leave without daring a conversation with the dad he never thought he'd see again.

But it's his _dad_. It's one last opportunity to ask the niggling questions he thought he'd get to ask. It's a chance.

So Nathan goes forward to meet Garland.

And just like he thought, it's definitely a mistake.

* * *

"Where'd you bury me?" is the first thing Garland says, without even bothering to look over at Nathan.

"Don't worry, I made sure you have a good view."

"What do I care about views?" the chief asks caustically. "I'm dead."

Nathan takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, lets it out soundlessly. Still, the chief doesn't seem to realize the absurdity of his own statement.

"This is Haven, son," Garland says with a shrug. "You get used to it after a while."

You certainly grow to expect it, Nathan thinks, but he doesn't know that he'll ever get used to the myriad ways people can be emotionally scarred and physically hurt and psychologically damaged. He doesn't think he _wants_ to get used to it, as if that means he accepts it as the way things are meant to be and will always be.

"What'd you tell people?" his dad asks (his familiar abruptness almost makes Nathan catch another breath sharp in his throat).

"That you were lost at sea."

Garland scoffs. "I never wanted to be a martyr, exactly, but it'd have been more helpful if you'd found a way to blame Driscoll for it. How much trouble is he causing?"

"Audrey shot him. He's gone. Dwight's chief now."

"Good for her." His smile is quick and genuine. "Dwight, huh?"

"You trust him?" Nathan watches him closely, looking for a sign (though he's not sure of what, maybe just if he was right to trust the giant cleaner so quickly).

"He's a good man to have on your side." The chief hesitates. "But he's switched sides before, so he's not always the most reliable ally. Has a bit of a self-righteous streak, too. But he'll probably be a good chief. Not my first choice, but…"

"Parker didn't want it."

"Wasn't talking about her either."

Nathan actually takes a step back at the intensity of his dad's sudden, pointed stare. There's no way he means what it seems like he's saying, but… No. No, the chief would never trust _him_ to be in charge.

"You never even wanted me to be on the force." He hates how defensive he sounds, like a small child making excuses.

"I did," Garland says quietly, but he looks away.

A stir of anger slithers up from somewhere deep inside him, causing his bones to straighten so he stands taller, more confrontational. "The other ghosts are coming back for revenge, using the living to settle their scores. What are _you_ here for?"

"I don't know, Nathan. Dying's disorienting enough without adding coming back as an incorporeal being on top of it."

"Or maybe you just don't want to tell me. Like everything else in my life."

"Nathan, this is exactly why I knew you weren't ready, because you get caught up in the little things when you should be seeing the bigger picture."

" _What_ bigger picture?"

"The Troubles, of course!" Garland exclaims. He reaches up to his pocket, as if searching for a pack of gum or a cigarette, then huffs when he finds nothing there. "Every twenty-seven years they come back—and so does Audrey. And then they disappear for another twenty-seven years. It's an endless cycle that's been going on for who knows how long, punctuated by the town splitting into warring factions with disparate goals. With all of that, we don't have time to dither over smaller issues just because your feelings are hurt."

Nathan swallows (his mind is reeling at everything the chief said, revealed, dropped before him like it isn't more information than he's ever received from him in his entire life, and it only figures that it happens now that the chief is dead). "This isn't about feelings. How am I supposed to protect Audrey if I don't know what's going on?"

"You know what's at stake—the fate of Haven. _That's_ what matters."

"Chief, before you died, you said that things changed last time. But if the cycle's endless, then what happened? _What_ changed?"

The chief stares out at Haven for a long moment before turning to face Nathan. "Maybe it doesn't have to be endless. Maybe there's something that can stop it all. The Troubles. The war. Audrey losing her memories."

An absolute stillness captures Nathan, the boundless ocean turning into a deep well down which everything echoes with endless reverberations. His every sense, every cell in his body, strains toward the chief, heightened and alert at this implication that Parker _will_ be taken from him, erased and nullified to be sent back out into Haven (but not knowing him, not remembering him, no longer his friend or his partner, just a stranger, and he doesn't know why she likes him _this_ time, how can he possibly replicate it again?).

"How?" he demands, looming over the chief (who's short, he realizes with a distant surprise, so much shorter than him). "How can I save her?"

"I don't know!" Garland huffs and shrugs, as if Nathan actually shook him. "I just don't think we should get so caught up in the way things are that we don't at least _try_ to find another way. A better way."

"But you must know _something_. Something to keep Audrey from being erased." (All Nathan can see, then, is that other Audrey Parker, so blank and slow and scared; all he can think of is _his_ Parker looking like that, hesitant, tremulous, reaching for Duke because he's all she _almost_ remembers.)

Garland studies Nathan. "How close are you and her?"

This rattles him, enough to break him free of his fear. "What do you mean?"

"You and Audrey. How close are you two?"

"We're…we're friends. Partners."

"Are you in love with her?" the chief asks, as blunt as he always is (except when dancing around secrets and lies).

For just a moment, standing in a graveyard with his dad's ghost, Nathan lets himself believe that their relationship is different. Close. (As if _it_ is what he mourned after that day in the rock-strewn field rather than all the things he'd never know, all the things they'd never be.) For just a moment, Nathan lets himself be brave enough to examine his deepest, most fervent hopes.

A hesitant smile curves his lips up and he admits, "I don't know what it is. I—"

"Well, don't!" Garland orders him.

And the moment ends. Because this isn't _Dad_ ; it's the chief. The man so intent on holding the town together that smaller issues (like the son he got stuck with when he married his mom) got pushed aside for later.

"Why?" he asks dully. (He already knows the answer.)

"She's too important to this town. If she has feelings for you, she'll be distracted."

Nathan nods. "Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Sorry you wasted your time coming back."

"Nathan…"

They both look down at Garland's hand on Nathan's arm, but this time, in an odd reversal, it's Garland who can't feel anything, his fingers fuzzing straight through cloth and flesh alike.

"Nathan," he says again, softly, dropping his arm back to his side. "It's dangerous, being close to her. You're not the first man to fall for her charms, and you won't be the last. It's not worth it to put yourself through all that."

"And she's important," Nathan says (not quite bitterly, just resigned). "And I'm not."

Narrowing his eyes, Garland shakes his head. "Nathan…"

"No, I get it." Nathan forms the basis of a smile, though he's sure it doesn't look any more real than his dad's fingers disappearing against his arm. "Don't worry about my feelings."

If his dad would have said something to that, Nathan doesn't find out. His phone beeps insistently, and when he answers it, Audrey does what he was afraid she never would again.

She asks him for a ride.

* * *

The rest of the day is a jumble packed so tightly in Nathan's mind that he can't pull any one piece clear to examine it in greater detail. He remembers finding Audrey where Duke abandoned her, and how he was afraid to look at her in case he saw any hint of what he suspected had happened the night before. But she was happy to see him, even reaching out to squeeze his hand, saying she's so glad she finally gets to talk to him.

He remembers her telling him what Lucy Ripley said, and he thinks he must have felt mind-numbing terror at the revelation that Duke's father tried to kill Lucy (the Lucy who is, was, will be Parker). He must have, but mostly, he just remembers wondering if Duke is happy with all the answers he's gotten about his family (Nathan certainly isn't happy with the ones _he_ got).

The shack they follow Hopkins' wife to is chillingly familiar, so much so that Nathan sinks into a strange mental haze where every detail is piercingly sharp but it all blurs together in comforting gauze. He's not even surprised when a gun is pointed at him and the Rev is there and Duke's given a weapon (it's all happened before, and maybe he never got out of it at all, just dreamed that Parker came to rescue him, but no, she's here with him this time, in double the danger because she can't see the ghosts or hear the revelations Simon Crocker spills out like water wasted on parched sand).

Only vaguely does Nathan become aware that Garland's there, facing down both Simon and the Rev with his usual crusty stubbornness. Duke is horrified and adamant and too slow to pull the knife away from Kyle's lunge. And then he has blood on his hands (blood that so easily could have been Nathan's, and maybe still will be one day; or worse, if this cycle _doesn't_ end, Parker's blood) and a Trouble dies.

Important. Vital. A tool of the chess players multiplying war atop the bodies already cut down by the Troubles. As Duke stares down at his hands, at the knife trembling in his grasp, at the blood staining his skin, Nathan almost pities him. Better, maybe, to be unimportant than to have a fate like this one.

"Duke," Audrey says, so softly, so gently. "Drop the weapon. It's okay."

But instead, Duke turns it toward the Rev. "I won't kill for you!" he declares.

("I'll be your friend," he once told Nathan. "I just want to catch up," he said. "I have your back," he promised.

All lies.)

As the Trouble dies, the ghosts fade. Nathan hears them talking, trading threats and last words, but his eyes are locked on the pregnant wife, kneeling over her husband's body with quiet sobs. Smiling so proudly. It amazes him with a sort of horrified fascination that she was so quick to pull away from her husband, then so equally quick to forgive him…as long as he sacrificed his life. What kind of love is that?

"My son will clean up this town," Simon Crocker says, and even if he's a monster, he sounds proud. Confident. So ready to believe in and trust his son.

"I have a son, too," Garland says, and Nathan wishes he could believe it was anything more than just a parting shot to Crocker.

Then the ghosts are gone, leaving the living to haunt the world.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Duke doesn't want to talk about anything that happened. Audrey cajoles and pleads and soothes, but Nathan could have told her it wouldn't work. Duke's never been one to do what he's told (he wonders if, when Duke comes after Parker and thus Nathan, that trait will end Nathan's life…or save it). Eventually, the smuggler just turns and walks away. Audrey watches him go but makes no move to follow him (and Nathan can't help but think that finding a box of weapons, and throwing aside the new chief of police with his eyes turned silver, and going through an old journal, all of that probably took most of the night, so much so that maybe that's all the conversation he witnessed was referencing.)

(He hates that thought, because it reawakens his weak and trembling hope.)

"Are _you_ okay, Nathan?" Audrey asks him. "I know it can't be easy being back here."

"I'm not tied up this time," he says casually, but he doesn't hesitate in turning to lead her back to the Bronco, hoping they can get out of here quickly.

She casts him a sidelong glance but lets him get away with the evasion. "So…your dad."

"My dad," he says, and only then realizes that he didn't ask him about the ring around his neck. He forgot to ask what it was, what it means, and now he'll never know.

"You're really not going to tell me what he said?" Audrey grins at him as he opens her door for her. "You know I'll get it out of you eventually."

"He said that we shouldn't be afraid to try to change things. He said this cycle doesn't have to keep going forever. He said that the Troubles leave for twenty-seven years and when they come back, so do you."

That wipes the smile off her face, leaving a frown in its place. "Like…like I bring them with me?"

"No." He stares up at her, distracted by the change in their heights now that she's seated in the Bronco and he's standing at her side. "Like you take them away."

"Did he say that?"

"Yes," he says, though he can't remember the exact wording. It doesn't matter. Audrey could never cause Troubles; she fixes them.

"Hmm." She looks away and remains silent until he's in the driver's seat and starting up the engine. "I'm glad you got to see him," she says. "Get some closure."

"He's…" Nathan hates to crush her idealistic thoughts on family, so he just shrugs and lets it drop.

"Nathan, I'm sorry." Her voice is so small, so quiet, that he's looking worriedly over at her before he even realizes what she said. "I didn't mean to leave you hanging so long. It's just when Lucy Ripley said that about Simon Crocker, I wanted to ask Duke about it, and then he was fighting Dwight, and then…well, then everything happened, and the Teagues were singularly unhelpful, and…I really meant to come find you sooner."

"It's fine," he says, and he thinks there's probably a smile reshaping the lines of his mouth. "I'm just glad you came back."

"I was always going to come back," she says calmly. But then it must be too serious for her because she grimaces and says, "Apparently every twenty-seven years."

"Well, this time will be different," Nathan promises. "The chief said it didn't have to be this way, and he never was a believer in pie in the sky, so he must know more than he said—not that I'm surprised. We'll find out what's going on."

"Yeah." Even with his eyes straight ahead on the road, he can feel the warmth of her smile. "Partners."

"We're more than just partners," he says without thinking. The Bronco almost swerves when his brain catches up to his mouth (and since when do words come so easily to him?) and he dares a quick glance over to Audrey.

But. She's _smiling_. And _nodding_. "Definitely more than partners," she says. "We're allies now."

"Allies," he repeats. "But still friends."

She tilts her head to study him. "Of course."

And he's not sure (can't pull this jigsaw puzzle of kaleidoscopic emotions and moments apart long enough to really figure it out) if he is more relieved or disappointed.

* * *

"Nathan." Duke strolls into the Herald as brazenly as if he owns the place, so cocky and confident that, in comparison, Nathan feels small and hunched (cowed). "We should talk. You know, before the old geezers come back from wherever they're sticking their noses this time."

"They're out delivering the afternoon edition," Nathan says as he slowly sets aside the newspaper he was combing through. "They won't be back for at least an hour."

(He knows because he's begun to count on this time, when they're back and away and not likely to surprise him by barging in and distracting him or misdirecting him or even just finding out what he's doing.)

Duke makes an exaggerated expression of surprise. "Why, Nate, you're not actually _rebelling_ , are you? That's not your style."

"What do you want, Duke?" he growls. He doesn't like Duke here, in his space, too close, too arrogant, still carrying the smell of the woods and that shack with the bodies piled inside. He doesn't think he wants to hear what Duke has to say to him (not when he's still smarting from the chief's warnings and confused about Audrey's definitions). "Here to try to kill me again?"

"What? _No_!" Duke actually looks wounded. "In fact, I came to tell you that you _don't_ have to worry about me. There's no way I'm ever using whatever this…this… _thing_ …is."

"A Trouble," Nathan says for him. "You have a Trouble."

"Yes. I do," Duke takes a deep breath, "but it doesn't control me. It doesn't change who I am or the kind of person I refuse to be."

Nathan studies him closely. "Well, your father seemed pretty convinced that you'd follow in his footsteps."

"My _father_ only ever decided to act like one long after he was dead and gone. He lied and hid things, and lest we forget, he killed people and let self-righteous monsters like the Rev control him. That's not me, Nathan. That's not who I am. So why would I let that no-good excuse of a genetic donor dictate my future?" Duke frowns at him (he's so good at this, so good at playing the injured party and the sincere reformer). "I'd have thought _you_ would understand more than anyone, Nathan. Didn't Max Hansen think he could manipulate _you_ by talking about your Trouble?"

"Get out," Nathan grits through what must be clenched teeth. "For some reason Parker trusts you. Even knowing what you're capable of, even hearing about Lucy and your dad, even after the Rev and—" Nathan tastes blood but makes himself keep going (makes himself draw the battle lines and set his stance to endure whatever comes of it). "She trusts you. But I don't. I know that when push comes to shove, no matter how many good intentions you started out with, you'll always do what benefits you most."

"And you think killing you will benefit me? You think I _want_ your blood on my hands?"

"It wouldn't be the first time."

Duke stares at him, and there's something so unrecognizable in his eyes (something like guilt, like shame, like remorse) that Nathan actually thinks he's going to bring it up. To talk about it. (To apologize.)

And Nathan thinks he'll let him. (He thinks he _wants_ him to address it.)

Those days, a few years back, when Duke came back to town, and he sought Nathan out and smiled at him, invited him for drinks, for fishing, for card games. When Nathan let himself believe bygones could be bygones and good could come his way in Haven. When he'd let his guard down and imagined the possibility of a friend. When Duke asked him about his life and his job and his place here, and Nathan had answered because it felt so _good_ to know that someone _cared_ , someone was interested in his life, and it had been so _long_ since he'd had any kind of conversation at all.

And the day when Duke told him he had a job opportunity for him that would use his stubbornness and his aloofness and his press pass. A job working for Duke, with Duke, bodyguard to the smuggler, criminal partners, outlaws and outcasts. He'd said that so many doors would open for them. Nothing would be able to stop them. No one would be able to get in their way.

The moment when Nathan said no, and all the friendship evaporated like a mirage. Duke's cool response ( _Your loss_ , he said, as if Nathan needed to know that Duke wouldn't miss anything, that he'd faked it all), and the sudden absence of all his smiles and jokes and commiseration.

That moment, when Nathan realized that nothing was ever going to change. That Haven was his home, but it was treacherous and would always, always take away everything he wanted. That moment when the numbness swallowed him whole and Duke couldn't seem to understand _why_ Nathan was so mad he threw the first punch (but Duke hadn't minded throwing quite a few in return, had he? hadn't minded bashing his face in until the Coast Guard pulled them apart and Nathan realized that Duke's betrayal, his apathy, was the last thing he would ever feel).

It will always be this way. Duke dared him to brave the steep hill so slick his sled went out of control and exposed his Trouble to all their classmates. Duke congratulated him on a girl actually liking him and added insult to injury. Duke pretended to be his friend so that he could use him for his own illegal good. And Duke is conning Audrey, manipulating her, and this betrayal, this inevitable end, will be the most painful of them all.

So yes, Nathan wants Duke to bring it up. He wants this to finally be pulled out into the open.

But Duke sighs. His eyes drop. His hands fall to his sides.

And that's it. He's not going to say anything. Nothing to explain. To justify. To apologize. (Maybe he knows nothing he says will ever be enough.)

"Stay away from Audrey."

Nathan knows it's a mistake as soon as he hears himself make the demand. It's not something he can enforce, or that Audrey will even allow, and it reveals far too much of his own fears (his private hopes).

"No," Duke says softly. "Audrey and I are friends, Nathan, and like you said, she trusts me. Besides, I have a feeling she needs all the allies she can get."

"What?" Nathan actually staggers back a step, causing Duke to look at him uncertainly. That word. _Allies_. Not special, either. Duke and Audrey are friends. Duke and Audrey are allies. And partners? Is that something he has to share too?

(Petty, so petty, Nathan knows, he _knows_ , but he has nothing and no one in this town except Audrey and it's hard, so very hard, not to cling too tightly, to let go instead of _hold on_.)

"I'm not who you think I am," Duke says. "So you can get all territorial and irrational if you want, but Audrey needs more than just you and your press pass on her side."

There will be blood on his palms from the force of his white-knuckled fists, just as much blood as there is in his mouth, enough so that he should be worrying about biting through his tongue. But none of it matters next to the smirk on Duke's face as he leans forward to pull one of the old copies of the _Herald_ closer. The paper on top of it falls away to reveal a picture of Audrey-as-Lucy.

"I don't mean to tell you how to do your job," Duke says archly, "but if you're really looking for clues, don't just read the stories she's mentioned in. Read all the articles surrounding it. Those old coots are professional showmen, which means they know how to distract with one hand while accomplishing the trick with the other."

Whistling, Duke winks and strolls out the door, a blast of wind swirling inside to upset Nathan's world before flying onward to warmer places. Classic Duke, to leave him with parting words that sound like advice but could so easily double as a threat.

Still. Nathan looks down at the piles of yellowing newspapers he's gathered. With Parker's life on the line, he can't afford to leave any stone unturned.

And Duke's right: he's going to need more than a press pass and a pen for this.

* * *

The office looks nearly the same as it did the last time Nathan was in here. Or he thinks it does; he can't remember the last time he was here. Whenever it was, he's sure it ended with an argument and him storming away while the chief went back to whatever it was he did here (another thing Nathan will never be able to ask him about).

There's one major difference, of course. The man sitting at the desk, hair newly cut to make him look slightly less scary, who peers worriedly at a pile of papers in front of him.

"Suits you," Nathan says softly.

Dwight looks up. He seems strangely touched (as if Nathan's opinion matters to him). "The office?"

"The haircut," Nathan says, daring to enter the office and approach the desk (he doesn't want everyone in the bullpen to hear what he's about to say).

A laugh escapes the giant and he beckons Nathan even closer. "Dave suggested it, and I was tired enough with Crocker calling me 'Sasquatch' not to dither over it for long. Besides," he sobers, "people around here need someone they can trust. Someone they can put their confidence in."

"Well, not many people would be brave enough to say anything against you."

"You?" Dwight's stare is suddenly intense, catching Nathan off-guard. "Would you stand against me?"

"I told you it was fine. This may have been my dad's office at one time, but it wasn't always. And you're right. Haven needs someone in charge, someone willing to make tough choices."

"I know, but…" Dwight stands and moves to join Nathan on the other side of the desk. "Truthfully, people are lost and confused after everything that's happened. People who know are worried about power struggles, and people who don't know…they're aware enough of the tension in town. But I don't just need people who will follow me because they're scared. I need people who will lead the charge when I can't be there. People who will call me out on things."

"Trust me, if you're wrong, Parker won't be afraid to tell you."

"Yeah, she's got a spine of steel." Dwight runs a hand over his hair, as if still surprised at its new shorn length. "I just… I know you don't know me well, but I feel like I know you. I've seen you around, read your articles, listened to your dad talk about you. I think you'd be a good man to have on the team."

Nathan takes a breath (hopes Dwight doesn't laugh at him, or worse, look at him with pity). "About that…how serious are you? Did you really mean it when you said you thought I could belong here?"

Dwight narrows his eyes. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want to apply."

 _You need a real partner, Audrey_ , his dad had said. _A cop_.

 _Audrey needs more than just you and your press pass on her side_ , Duke said.

They're right. Nathan's gone as far as he can with his pen and notebook, won as many allies to her as the _Herald_ can manage. It's time to do more. To step up.

To be a _real_ partner.

"You want a job?" Dwight asks (Nathan thinks he sounds hopeful). "Now?"

"As soon as possible." Nathan shrugs. "Haven's getting more dangerous all the time. It needs more protectors. And Parker needs someone to watch her back. So what would I have to do to become a detective?"

"In Haven? You need to be willing to risk your life on a daily basis. And I already know you're qualified."

"So?" Nathan makes himself meet Dwight's eyes. "Willing to hire me?"

Dwight doesn't look pitying. He doesn't laugh. He doesn't shake his head and give him excuses.

Instead, he reaches out a hand, and when Nathan hesitantly puts his own forward, Dwight shakes his hand.

"Welcome to the Haven PD. It's good to have a Wuornos here again."

* * *

He really wasn't sure that Dwight would actually hire him. He'd half-thought he was just reaching for a pipe dream that would never happen. But now there's a badge on his hip and an appointment to the shooting range to get certified to carry a government-issued firearm and his signature on a lot of official papers back in Dwight's office. He has a desk ("Good thing there's one already open and waiting in Audrey's office," Dwight said with a sly smile) and a training program and a short note serving as his resignation sitting on his emptied desk in the Herald.

He's a member of the police department. If he can finish the training necessary (if he can prove that repressed memories of childhood trauma won't hold him back in the field), he'll be a detective.

And he hasn't told Parker.

Hasn't asked her what she thinks about it. If she wants him as a _real_ partner. Whether she likes having an empty desk rather than a socially clumsy, Troubled partner.

He hasn't lied to her, he tells himself, or at least, not by more than omission if anything.

As a consolation prize, he carries the two articles he found after combing through the papers that mentioned both Lucy Ripley and, much earlier, a woman called Sarah Vernon. Two articles that may mean something or nothing (but at least it gives him an excuse to knock on Audrey's door without being invited).

Nathan looks down to make sure he hasn't unknowingly dropped the papers, then looks up so he doesn't stumble on the steps leading up to Parker's place. Some sort of luck (or maybe a Trouble that hasn't revealed its downside yet) is shining on him because Duke is nowhere in sight. Nathan quickens his steps just in case.

 _Parker_ , he thinks, trying to rehearse what he'll say (trying to imagine that she'll be pleased to see the badge on his hip that matches her own). _You remember how when that serial killer was on the loose, I worked from your office. That wasn't so bad, was it?_

Huffing, he shakes his head. No good. It sounds stupid and…and it carries too many treasured memories he doesn't want to risk being marred by whatever her reaction might be (can't bear to hear her refer to those days as something besides amazing and wonderful and tantalizing).

But he really didn't need to worry. In fact, he should have known that it wouldn't matter. Too much had already gone his way that day. Of course something horrible would happen to even the scales.

Audrey's door is open. There's broken glass on the floor. Overturned chairs. Drawers pulled open. Audrey's scent spices up the place, but it's punctuated by the smell of sea and blood and electricity.

Audrey's gone. Missing. Taken.

And Duke's whistle (so familiar, probably stained with Nathan's blood from when he grabbed it and pulled Duke back to him for another right hook on that fishing boat so many years before) is lying on the floor. Like a red herring. Like a warning sign. Like a target.

Nathan goes cold and still and silent. He imagines he can feel his left arm, just under his elbow, where the tattoo gleams with absolute purpose.

A guardian. A protector. An avenger.

It's a good thing, is his last clear thought, that he's allowed to carry a gun now.


End file.
